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Is your smartphone listening to you?

bbc.co.uk

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Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#61

Post by dave2000 »

reitanqild wrote: post #58
dave2000 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

With a Nexus you're trusting Google with a lot more info than Samsung could hope to obtain. So if this isn't about legality then I'm not sure what it is. Presumably Samsung aren't storing your email credentials so they can launch a spam campaign, and you've not provided anything like enough information to deduce that they're doing anything other than, perhaps, keeping the email moving.

I never read EULAs and I can imagine they're not valid everywhere, but they're useful as a measure of the intent of the company producing them. I imagine Samsung, for example, reserves the right to use any information you provide to ensure a certain quality of service. I'm sure Google have run their EULAs - valid or not - past similar lawyers.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#63

Post by sukilot »

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…

What you describe is certainly technically possible, but could not be secretly done by a major corporation because it would easily be caught and become a PR and legal disaster

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#66

Post by walrus01 »

voidz wrote: post #9

The article takes it into a boring direction, and they didn't mention Samsung who is most active in this field. Vendors bypass appstores with their proprietary apps. 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. That's when I tossed out Samsung devices once and for all. But…

You set it up with your own IMAP(TLS) and smtpd for email, and in your server logs the logins were coming from Samsung IPs, not the wifi or cellular network your phone was connected to? Where were these Samsung IPs in terms of physical location and netblock? If they're doing MITM on their customers' traffic I'm really curious where it's going through.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#67

Post by sukilot »

ddebernardy wrote: post #18

> Facebook also told the BBC it does not allow brands to target advertising based around microphone data and it never shares data with third parties without consent. This and the follow-up paragraph read like: > Facebook monitors background noise already without using it themselves for advertisement targetting purposes, but will share the data with third parties if you miss a privacy setting. /tinfoil

Are you intentionally changing the scope of terms in your misparaphrase?

FB doesn't share data, it uses data for targeting, and it doesn't target by mic data.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#68

Post by nickpsecurity »

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.

Brilliant. Never even occurred to me. People often use headsets, wired or wireless, for the mic. Can just not enable audio unless one is plugged in. That's so easy to verify. Thanks for stating the obvious to my overly-complex mind. :)

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#69

Post by digi_owl »

nickpsecurity wrote: post #56
digi_owl wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Well in my case there is no sim in the slot, so i can't say i care.

Re: Is your smartphone listening to you?

#70

Post by readme »

It definitely does, and I wouldn't be surprised if big companies did not do it directly. I'd theorize that the tiny apps people download for games or little cat pictures unkowningly integrate this functionality as a dependency of advertising SDKs they use to make $0.10 CPC then the ad middlemen sell it back to the bigger companies.
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