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Is your smartphone listening to you?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#51

Post by majewsky »

dredmorbius wrote: post #34
nickpsecurity wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in my proposal for a secure or private phone that I drop on people trying to build one. Hopefully it will get in a successful product at some point. Need one for mic, front camera, rear camera, and radios. Might compromise to have a physical switch for mic and radios with something inside phone (eg a jumper) to turn off others. I want to be sure I can cut actual power to mic and wireless, though.

Sell a micless phone. Actually, it's a tablet, and if you want it to go into surveillance / phone mode, you plug in your own goddamend mic. Most headsets have one. Alternatively: a phone whose "off" mode is a battery eject.

Re battery eject: How can you be sure that the removable battery is the only one?

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#52

Post by majewsky »

dredmorbius wrote: post #36

As I've been suggesting increasingly on HN and elsewhere: sell me hardware without a mic. I no longer trust mobile phones at all, so I carry one virtually never. I use a tablet. It has an integrated mic and two cameras. The cameras are taped (they should have lens caps). On the rare occasions I use it for voice comms, I plug in a headset. Pervasive audio pickup is a growing problem. It's going to be all but impossibl…

On a related stance, Rob Gonggrijp and Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club suggested a certification for "Guaranteed Cloud-less Objects", given the recent surge of IoT devices that spy on you, or lock you out unexpectedly because of server maintenance.

Source: Video at https://media.ccc.de/v/32c3-7501-ten_years_after_we_lost_the...

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#53

Post by majewsky »

logicallee wrote: post #29
etatoby wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You only need to put in the app an obscure functionality that makes use of the mic, and then explain what it is in the app description, for the 1% of people who will even bother to ask why Super Candy Smash Tournament is asking for permission to use the mic.

If Google were serious about granular permissions in Android it would allow you to choose from three options: "allow", "block", "pretend to allow" for every requested permission, where the third would be described as "Your app will be given permission but will not have actual access unless you grant it." Then later you could have a pop-up "This app is requesting access to your camera. You have previously chosen to gi…

Didn't they add this to Marshmallow? So that if the app wants to access the camera roll, but you don't allow it, it just gets an empty list of images.

(I might confuse this with iOS, though. Does someone have a source?)

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#54

Post by aembleton »

smaisidoro wrote: post #14

I have to say, I'm very sceptical about all of this, but one day a friend showed me a product (some speakers that use the table surface for resonance) and the ad showed a couple of minutes after on Facebook. I started thinking on how devices can emit audio signatures for other devices around it to be aware of its presence. A couple of years after, Chromecast uses audio for authentication of nearby devices. I honestly…

If you or your friend visited the webpage of the product and it had a Facebook Like button then Facebook would know that you or your friend were interested.

If it was your friend that visited the product webpage, then Facebook also knows that you are friends with him and also knows that you are both interested in similar things based on your browsing history and so it would show you the ad.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#55

Post by sandworm101 »

In defence of the BBC, they are particularly sensitive to this atm. It is not unusual for journalists in the UK to be asked to remove batteries from phones, particularly when discussing certain international matters that may interest certain people. The concept of a smartphone being turned into a listening device isn't unheard of in the UK. For whatever reason, US/Canadian journalists are more trusting. I trace this to the aftermath of the london riots and RIM revelations. So I am not surprised to see the BBC publish something in this area more readily than others.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#56

Post by nickpsecurity »

digi_owl wrote: post #33
Canada wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd also buy such a phone. The switches to toggle each radio and sensor could be behind the removable back panel. I wish it were possible to easily disable in software mobile service without also disabling wifi and bluetooth as well.

At least on my Huawei P6 i can set it to flight mode and then turn back on wifi and bluetooth. Actually i have used the thing more like a PDA than a phone, as i have a well functioning HSPA capable featurephone that i pair up if ever i need data on the go.

You mean it's a soft-switch that tells you it does that. You have no idea if the radio is actually running at any time or not. That plus their reliability issues are why I don't like soft-switches.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#57

Post by jimhefferon »

f_allwein wrote: post #48
jimhefferon wrote: post #4

If a vendor provided a physical switch with which I could turn off the mic, that would be a feature that I at least would consider very attractive.

might be a future option for Google's project Ara.

I'm not seeing that. Certainly I'd expect their basic phone to come with a mic. I want a way to physically disconnect an existing mic, not to connect a new one. Am I off here (probably ..)?

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#58

Post by reitanqild »

dave2000 wrote: post #45
digi_owl wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Once upon a time I had a Samsung phone, and when I configured its email app, I saw Samsung's own servers, and not my phone, logging in to my email server. Which means they stole my password. Would love to see some traffic logs regarding this.

Plus a copy of all the EULAs you consented to with Samsung when you used their phone and software.

However relevant this possibly is a court case it is less relevant when you are about to pick between a nexus, an iPhone and a Samsung S-series.

Also while IANAL, note that in a number of jurisdictions EULAs like the ones you seem to think about might not be valid. Norwegians consumer authorities recently mocked them and I applaud them for it.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#59

Post by jimhefferon »

drdaeman wrote: post #21
nickpsecurity wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's in my proposal for a secure or private phone that I drop on people trying to build one. Hopefully it will get in a successful product at some point. Need one for mic, front camera, rear camera, and radios. Might compromise to have a physical switch for mic and radios with something inside phone (eg a jumper) to turn off others. I want to be sure I can cut actual power to mic and wireless, though.

If your threat model concerns with hardware/firmware exploits, then you can't trust the physical switches unless they cut all the wires - and unless you can validate that this is what they do. Theoretically speaking, a malicious (or threatened/persuaded/forced) manufacturer may implement a non-standard way to power the supposedly disconnected component using still-connected wiring, to be used for a special occasions.…

I want a DPDT switch that sits between the mic and the rest of the phone. That seems do-able to me.

I use masking tape over the camera, so I'm looking for a similar microphone solution.

(I don't want it inside the case, since I want to be able to flip the switch conveniently. Likewise, removing the battery is not what I want.)

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#60

Post by lukeschlather »

jimhefferon wrote: post #57
f_allwein wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

might be a future option for Google's project Ara.

I'm not seeing that. Certainly I'd expect their basic phone to come with a mic. I want a way to physically disconnect an existing mic, not to connect a new one. Am I off here (probably ..)?

The Ara is a modular smartphone system. Since there's a clear benefit to being able to remove the audio/video/wireless modules, I would hope that they are fully replaceable and separate from the screen and CPU modules.
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