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Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

bbc.com

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Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#361

Post by luxpir »

Feniks wrote: post #354
isostatic wrote: post #338

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ads are such an integral part of our lives I'll skip the futurama reference for now, but for me ads are far rarer than in the 90s. Adblock handles most things online, iPlayer, Netflix and amazon don't really have adverts on TV (they have a graphical menu but I would call that an advert), Spotify doesn't have adverts. Sure there are a few adverts if I go to somewhere like london, and Sainsbury's advertise their own…

Absolutely. Ublock origin scrubs every page clean of ads and trackers. It's really not THAT hard to stay off the grid.

Quick note to say that despite umatrix/ublock origin, it's hard to not be tracked via canvas fingerprint tracking, where the use of a blocker can make you more trackable. I mean it's not necessarily the ad companies at that point, but you're still a data point for marketing/surveillance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canvas_fingerprinting

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#363

Post by kagamine »

rimliu wrote: post #340
null0pointer wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a similar anecdote. Girlfriend was having some symptoms, we briefly talked about it then walked to the pharmacy and bought a pregnancy test. Maybe 30 minutes after purchasing the test we watched a youtube video on her phone. The ad on the video was for the exact test we bought. I figured that youtube got the credit card info from the purchase but I was shocked at how quickly that translated into something show…

Do credit card companies get the list of items you purchased, not just amount and the place?

Depends on which country you are in. Your bank card in some European countries is not allowed to receive or store info about the items you purchased, but the shop obviously will and there is a limit on what they can do with that info and for how long they can store it.

So if I pay for petrol with a card and also buy donuts and coffee the bank and the shop cannot market to me according to what I bought, but if I join a loyalty card scheme then I'm opting in and the shop can, but not the bank.

In Norway btw, where govt. are strict about this sort of thing.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#364

Post by luxpir »

gnulinux wrote: post #327
yazaddaruvala wrote: post #321

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they manipulate people in controlled experiments to extract as much money from them as possible. You just described A/B testing. This is a technique used by every successful company. The only thing unique about Facebook is the data.

FB is also okay using data other companies choose not to. Ethics is definitely a factor, too.

This is the thing. It's a fine line between offering someone a solution they might want or appreciate based on their search. Another to manipulate them into wanting it through emotional plays.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#365

Post by dredmorbius »

widforss wrote: post #325
squarefoot wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago I did a Google search for my name as i do once or twice a year just to see what comes out. This time I had mixed reactions because among first results there was full text taken from a scanned old magazine dated 1978 or so with my name complete with street address. That was long before the Internet was publicly available and having such data into a magazine would not hurt anyone because people expecte…

What's the reason for keeping your address a secret? Genuinely curious, as where I live (se) almost all peoples addresses are public information, and it's really practical.

33 bits. Information is a force multiplier, not power itself (Francis Bacon was wrong.)

https://33bits.wordpress.com/about/

It takes only 33 bits of distinctive information to identify a given person. Specific information about a person, including background, can help provide further information on them -- it tells you where to look (and more importantly, a very good idea as to where not to), who to talk to, and what they might have done.

"If one would give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest man, I would find something in them to have him hanged."

- Cardinal Richelieu (a/k/a Armand Jean du Plessis, Cardinal-Duc de Richelieu et de Fronsac)

"the forced revelation of information makes individual privilege and power more important. When everyone has to play with their cards on the table, so to speak, then people who feel like they can be themselves without consequence do so freely -- these generally being people with support groups of like-minded people, and who are neither economically nor physically vulnerable. People who are more vulnerable to consequences use concealment as a method of protection: it makes it possible to speak freely about controversial subjects, or even about any subjects, without fear of harassment."

https://plus.google.com/+YonatanZunger/posts/WegYVNkZQqq

(Yonatan Zunger is the former chief architect of Google+.)

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#367

Post by corobo »

rando444 wrote: post #357
Vinnl wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I consider it likely that this is merely just another example of people underestimating how much data they're leaking. I would wager to guess that there would have been far easier methods of deducing that new connection other than listening to your conversation and somehow inferring it from that stream of noise. You just don't know which, but it's not unimaginable that that certain information was leaked in another w…

It's not unimaginable, but the frequency of these stories should make you wonder. I had this happen personally. Had a conversation about my work with this girl I know which ended up being mostly about project management. The girl told me later she started getting ads for project management stuff. It's not a subject she's interested in, has ever searched for information on, and has no relevance to her job working the…

The issue is in the story teller. If the person telling the story doesn't understand what other data they're leaking or the data the people they interact with are leaking you cannot take their word that "Facebook is listening to my microphone" at face value, no matter how frequently they say it.

Also wouldn't a constant stream of audio - even low quality audio - ruin battery life? I realise it's a phone so it's base usage is a constant stream of audio but I can't help but feel that or something else would be giving it away.

As they have a bug bounty program I imagine there's plenty of people watching raw network activity between app and Facebook too.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#368

Post by Mindwipe »

julien_c wrote: post #241
tedunangst wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apparently people think there's a secret backdoor that lets an iPhone app record audio without turning the status bar red. You could deny mic permission and people would still think it's the secret backdoor.

Recording audio from an iOS app does not turn the status bar red, FYI.

It does if the application isn't running in the foreground.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#369

Post by cm2187 »

gnulinux wrote: post #326
Cacti wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think people really underestimate how much data they leak all day long, and how strong the pattern is. Simply emitting bluetooth and wifi, nevermind cellular, all day long can expose an incredible amount of stuff, provided someone can piece it all together (which is exactly what Facebook and other ad companies do). We like to pretend we're unique and powered by free-will but the reality is most things you do a…

> The difference between us and 1984 is only really one of intent I'm not convinced intent isn't there; I'm also confused why'd you assume that. As a free software activist, I wonder have you every checked EFF or FSF websites. I'm not saying EFF and FSF are saving the world (no, they are not) but if you browse what they're dealing with, you can easily see the intent is there. It is simply hard to do all these without…

> Most people are okay being watched, and this is part of the problem.

I am not sure I agree with that. I think the vast majority of people react to the same way to surveillance, they at most don't like it, or outright hate it.

But most people are not conscious of this surveillance. If there was a guy following them absolutely everywhere, all day long, and logging on a notepad everything they do and everything they say, they would go absolutely mad. It's just that current surveillance, through cookies, CCTVs, server side logging, is too stealth for people to notice.

Re: Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

#370

Post by daemin »

widforss wrote: post #325
squarefoot wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few months ago I did a Google search for my name as i do once or twice a year just to see what comes out. This time I had mixed reactions because among first results there was full text taken from a scanned old magazine dated 1978 or so with my name complete with street address. That was long before the Internet was publicly available and having such data into a magazine would not hurt anyone because people expecte…

What's the reason for keeping your address a secret? Genuinely curious, as where I live (se) almost all peoples addresses are public information, and it's really practical.

I think it's not so much keeping this sort of information a secret, it has never really been a secret as anyone with some motivation could find out these things. The big thing these days with computerisation and the Internet is it is making these things trivial to acquire, accumulate, and search. It's not a matter of going to offices and looking through paper records, because it's all at someone's fingertips.
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