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Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#11

Post by api »

misnome wrote: post #4
zwtaylor wrote: post #2

Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.

Coincidence is a less sinister explanation. You never take note of the adverts if they weren’t immediately relevant.

This seems like something that could be settled via some kind of study, like playing audio to the phone and recording what ads get shown and doing it to a population of phones and social media accounts.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#12

Post by smashingfiasco »

Cacti wrote: post #6
zwtaylor wrote: post #2

Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.

You can't imagine a less sinister explanation other than Facebook or some other entity is secretly recording your voice and the voices of millions of people, in violation of numerous state and federal laws, through their smartphone microphones, uploading it to their servers surreptitiously, performing voice analysis on it to determine who is speaking out of 350,000,000 possible cases (presumably they've already catal…

I mean, they did break iOS platform rules and pulled some tricks to keep the app open in the background all of the time by sending an empty audio beffer to the phone for "playback."

So yes, really.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#13

Post by weaksauce »

quickben wrote: post #3

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wake... https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-s... "Industry wide adoption" 2013 The rest is PR.

Has there been confirmation that a chip like that is inside any of these smartphones?

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#14

Post by smashingfiasco »

api wrote: post #9

Wouldn't it be possible to detect this? If this is happening then it must require some amount of CPU and memory use on the device, which even if hidden from the OS can be detected via power use and heat dissipation. It should be possible to indirectly measure a phone's CPU load (including any hidden processors) by filming it in the infrared and/or by attaching it to power and measuring the wattage consumed from the s…

Remember the time they kept the app open in the background on iOS devices by sending an empty audio buffer to the phone for playback?

People started discovering that after iOS introduced the battery/power usage section in the Settings app.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#15

Post by sp527 »

Once happened while remarking on the Fruit Loops shake at Burger King. Opened Facebook minutes later and got a Fruit Loops ad. I assure you I don’t message, post, or in any other way remotely suggest an affinity for Fruit Loops. Commenting on it at Burger King was the definition of a one-off incident.

I guess another possible explanation is some very sophisticated combination of location tracking and Kellogg’s targeting people they know will be primed by that promotional item. And then of course it could always just be an amazing coincidence.

All I know is I revoked microphone permission after that.

EDIT: Something just occurred to me. Facebook doesn’t have to be the one using your microphone to target ads. The ad buyers just have to have a way to match your phone to your ID (which they can easily; there was a site posted here a while back that sells that) and then listen in through ANY one of the apps you have installed. If this were the scheme, Facebook could reasonably get away with saying “WE don’t use your microphone to target ads.”

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#16

Post by 0x4f3759df »

zwtaylor wrote: post #2

Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.

I was using google navigation and someone in the back asked "what do you mean one-size fits all"... then my phone which was only running navigator chimed in "one-size fits all means blah blah blah" was definitely creepy.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#17

Post by finnn »

0x4f3759df wrote: post #16
zwtaylor wrote: post #2

Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.

I was using google navigation and someone in the back asked "what do you mean one-size fits all"... then my phone which was only running navigator chimed in "one-size fits all means blah blah blah" was definitely creepy.

Google Maps navigation feature listens for verbal input (although it's supposed to be triggered by the wake word) to do things like add stops and such without touching it

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#19

Post by quickben »

weaksauce wrote: post #13
quickben wrote: post #3

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wake... https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-s... "Industry wide adoption" 2013 The rest is PR.

Has there been confirmation that a chip like that is inside any of these smartphones?

From the first link, they list Snapdragon 800 family.

Early 2014, phones that used it were:

http://www.freewaresquad.com/2014/02/18/phones-with-snapdrag...

Today that CPU series is everywhere.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#20

Post by oceanstone »

sp527 wrote: post #15

Once happened while remarking on the Fruit Loops shake at Burger King. Opened Facebook minutes later and got a Fruit Loops ad. I assure you I don’t message, post, or in any other way remotely suggest an affinity for Fruit Loops. Commenting on it at Burger King was the definition of a one-off incident. I guess another possible explanation is some very sophisticated combination of location tracking and Kellogg’s target…

Out of curiosity, why did you remark on the Fruit Loops shake? Could it be due to an ad campaign that started prior to your remark, and continues after it?
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