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Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

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Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#31

Post by civilized »

This article is insane. It basically claims that

1. In 2018 our phones were constantly snitching on our conversations

2. The author verified this experimentally

3. No one can prove it because "it's all encrypted" (since, as we all know, "encryption" makes all forensics impossible)

4. "It's not a big deal" because "it's just an extension of television advertising".

With journalists like these, who needs disinformation? They'll spontaneously fabricate a better story than you could possibly feed them, just to get attention.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#32

Post by jodrellblank »

dolni wrote: post #3
auslegung wrote: post #2

They almost certainly aren’t listening to you https://mobile.twitter.com/RobertGReeve/status/1397032784703... . But the likely explanation isn’t any better imo.

I don't buy this. I was at a social outing some years back at pub that I had been to a number of times before with some longtime friends of mine. Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads. I hadn't had one of those in two decades, and certainly hadn't seen any ads for them in a long time. But still, the very next day, I was getting ads for them on social media. Everyone I ha…

> "Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads."

Are you sure you don't have cause and effect backwards, and the "somehow" was actually one of you seeing an advert for Warheads earlier because they'd started advertising more in general or more at your group's demographic, then they were near in mind to talk about, then the ads were more noticable?

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#33

Post by tylermenezes »

dolni wrote: post #3
auslegung wrote: post #2

They almost certainly aren’t listening to you https://mobile.twitter.com/RobertGReeve/status/1397032784703... . But the likely explanation isn’t any better imo.

I don't buy this. I was at a social outing some years back at pub that I had been to a number of times before with some longtime friends of mine. Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads. I hadn't had one of those in two decades, and certainly hadn't seen any ads for them in a long time. But still, the very next day, I was getting ads for them on social media. Everyone I ha…

I had this with Elder Law ads, after I started watching Better Call Saul.

I was watching it as MP4s I'd pirated /years/ ago, on VLC, on a computer running Arch Linux.

I have lots of examples that I can hand-wave away as interest profiles, but I've thought about this one since and just have absolutely no idea how it would happen. If someone could explain how this happened without using the mic, I'd be really interested. Better Call Saul hadn't touched my browsing history for years, and elder law never had at all.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#34

Post by behringer »

cgriswald wrote: post #29
Buttons840 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's scarier, that you saw an ad regarding very personal details of your life because your phone was listening, or even though your phone wasn't listening? People see this happen and reach for an explanation they understand, "my phone must have been eavesdropping!" The truth is these ad and data companies know this about you without your phone having to listen. To twist a quote from the Matrix: "So you're saying my…

When I notice this experience, it's usually because it's something I don't normally talk about. I don't believe that Facebook knows so much (about me and the people around me) that it knows about unlikely conversations I've just had based on (say) a conversation on a radio station I randomly heard while skimming through channels. I'm willing to believe it's a coincidence combined with my brain happening to bring it t…

The reality is that they, the ad companies, caused you to think about it or talk about it in the first place without you ever realizing it. Ads work incredibly well on people even when they think they aren't susceptible.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#35

Post by jvanderbot »

behringer wrote: post #34
cgriswald wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I notice this experience, it's usually because it's something I don't normally talk about. I don't believe that Facebook knows so much (about me and the people around me) that it knows about unlikely conversations I've just had based on (say) a conversation on a radio station I randomly heard while skimming through channels. I'm willing to believe it's a coincidence combined with my brain happening to bring it t…

The reality is that they, the ad companies, caused you to think about it or talk about it in the first place without you ever realizing it. Ads work incredibly well on people even when they think they aren't susceptible.

found the ad man.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#36

Post by mwint »

saagarjha wrote: post #24

This article doesn’t make any sense. > For your smartphone to actually pay attention and record your conversation, there needs to be a trigger, such as when you say “hey Siri” or “okay Google.” In the absence of these triggers, any data you provide is only processed within your own phone. This might not seem a cause for alarm, but any third party applications you have on your phone—like Facebook for example—still hav…

What’s “AP” here?

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#38

Post by bryans »

eightysixfour wrote: post #12
dolni wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't buy this. I was at a social outing some years back at pub that I had been to a number of times before with some longtime friends of mine. Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads. I hadn't had one of those in two decades, and certainly hadn't seen any ads for them in a long time. But still, the very next day, I was getting ads for them on social media. Everyone I ha…

The chain of things that has to happen for this to work is implausible: 1. The device has to record the things used by the always on mics listening for wake words somewhere, without any other developers figuring this out and sharing how it is done. 2. Apps, using a background task, have to monitor those recordings, run speech recognition, and pick out key words, without anyone identifying this process. 3. The apps th…

That's not how any of these things work, at all. Much in the same way that Facebook and WhatsApp already hash direct messages and compare them to hashes of ad key phrases known to be effective, both audio and video can be hashed at the device level and sent as comparatively small strings, rather than large buffers of media. This can happen while the device is offline, and they can be easily sent along with routine data, which wouldn't even look out of place. Speech recognition doesn't even need to enter the equation at any point.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#39

Post by 7DY3M72u2jv8gtS »

civilized wrote: post #31

This article is insane. It basically claims that 1. In 2018 our phones were constantly snitching on our conversations 2. The author verified this experimentally 3. No one can prove it because "it's all encrypted" (since, as we all know, "encryption" makes all forensics impossible) 4. "It's not a big deal" because "it's just an extension of television advertising". With journalists like these, who needs disinformation…

But our phones are listening. We took a long drive today, and my wife and I discussed homosexuality during a significant portion of that drive. Once we got home, my wife started seeing ads for gay bars and events in Sarasota. Neither of us is homosexual, for what that’s worth.

This isn’t the first time this has happened. Every so often my wife would suddenly see ads on Facebook about things we’ve just discussed in meatspace. You might call this anecdata, but to me it’s a pattern because it keeps happening.

Re: Your phone is listening and it's not paranoia (2018)

#40

Post by eightysixfour »

bryans wrote: post #38
eightysixfour wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The chain of things that has to happen for this to work is implausible: 1. The device has to record the things used by the always on mics listening for wake words somewhere, without any other developers figuring this out and sharing how it is done. 2. Apps, using a background task, have to monitor those recordings, run speech recognition, and pick out key words, without anyone identifying this process. 3. The apps th…

That's not how any of these things work, at all. Much in the same way that Facebook and WhatsApp already hash direct messages and compare them to hashes of ad key phrases known to be effective, both audio and video can be hashed at the device level and sent as comparatively small strings, rather than large buffers of media. This can happen while the device is offline, and they can be easily sent along with routine da…

Using some sort of hash instead of transcribing the speech doesn’t change any of the things I listed that make this implausible.

There would need to be a background service that has access to the mic without using the official APIs (which show a mic notification) that somehow no one has been able to find for the 5+ years that people have been claiming this is happening.

The truth for all of these is probably that we are boring and predictable combined with some version of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.

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