Use a microphone with an hardware switch. Problem solved.
You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
111–120 of 353 posts
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
I hate the latter, because I use a keyboard shortcut to mute/unmute the microphone on the OS-level. This works fine with Google Meet, but in Microsoft Teams I have to use the button in its UI because that pop-up gets in the way (also: Teams not working at all in Firefox, what's up with that?).
Firefox is an unsupported browser - Teams works fine on Edge.
> Teams works fine for me on Edge.
"If you don't want to install our app, you can just install our browser."
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#113I feel like they're trying to make an insidious suggestion about the usage of these. IMO, there's likely a good reason - user experience. At a hardware level, grabbing the microphone can take time. Even worse that timing is inconsistent across devices, workloads, etc. That leads to a bad experience when unmuting and needing to delay your commentary. The solution to this is to keep the microphone on, but mute at a sof…
Honestly, it feels like most people here aren't reading the article. > The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music…
It is, just most people don’t care. And you can’t buy a little shutter for your laptop mic like you can for the camera.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#114I feel like they're trying to make an insidious suggestion about the usage of these. IMO, there's likely a good reason - user experience. At a hardware level, grabbing the microphone can take time. Even worse that timing is inconsistent across devices, workloads, etc. That leads to a bad experience when unmuting and needing to delay your commentary. The solution to this is to keep the microphone on, but mute at a sof…
Honestly, it feels like most people here aren't reading the article. > The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music…
> How is this not extremely concerning for anybody who cares about privacy?
Because they're not actually doing that?
These researchers did everything they could think of to come up with the most concerning headline.
I imagine someone, somewhere is going to make a video conferencing app that closes the audio interface every time you press mute. I also expect few people will use that option because it adds additional latency every time you unmute.
I want my mute button to work ASAP and I don't believe Zoom (or anyone else) is interested in whether or not I'm eating while muted.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#115Google Meet will pop up a little "you're muted - are you trying to speak" bubble if it hears noise through your mic while you're muted. So obviously it's still accessing the mic. I don't see this as a big deal.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
Teams is a real clustefuck, I do not believe it is a design decision but rather just poorly written code.
From the outside perspective, this must be true. Recently I have noticed, that Teams, unlike any other app I tried, is unable to properly distinguish between stereo and mic, when that arrives both at the headset jack (made for both, stereo and mic) of my laptop. When I switch in Teams to use that as mic, it means, that others hear themselves and do not hear me. I tried everything, but Teams is simply unable to take t…
Teams and audio problems is pervasive. Since a few months I cannot use Teams on the iPhone any more [1] because they changed/broke volume control so that even the lowest possible volume is way too loud (and interestingly, Teams somehow manages to circumvent the hearing protection settings in iOS). The audio quality on iOS is also very jarring, regardless of connection speed, basically to the point of it hurting in the ears even if you reduce the volume to a safe level (e.g. by dangling the headphones in front of your ears instead of putting them in, which is absolutely ridiculous). Similarly I had issues with Teams mute control on a dedicated, certified headset, where both the mute button on the headset and in the Teams UI did nothing, only the special Fn key on the laptop worked. "It magically fixed itself at some point".
[1] I really liked to walk'n'talk for a few recurring meetings. Unfortunately, Microsoft does not like people touching grass.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, it feels like most people here aren't reading the article. > The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music…
> How is this not extremely concerning for anybody who cares about privacy? Because they're not actually doing that? These researchers did everything they could think of to come up with the most concerning headline. I imagine someone, somewhere is going to make a video conferencing app that closes the audio interface every time you press mute. I also expect few people will use that option because it adds additional l…
> Because they're not actually doing that?
>> Applying the classifier to the type of telemetry packets the app was sending
Are you sure they’re not? The used these algorithms on telemetry packets sent from browsers. I see no reason to give companies whose revenue is built on ads the benefit of the doubt here.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, Meet does the same thing. I find it annoying, because I am muted because the kids are making a bunch of noise, not because I am trying to talk. I am muting because I don't want the sound in my room broadcasted... if it was silent, I wouldn't have to mute!
In like 25% of my meetings, somebody is accidentally muted while they are trying to speak. The popup speeds up the process of them unmuting.
I still don't know how professionals keep making this mistake. Having used Discord for so many years, this has never been a problem aside from a select few people who had very clear reason to mute themselves. Meanwhile in professional settings, people seem to be falling for this over and over while lacking the common curtesy of not letting random environmental noise bleed through (read: their mics are barely ever turned off).
Not to mention push-to-talk has solved this issue for almost a few decades now.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#119This article fails to recognize the value (in a Ui perspective) for detecting surrounding audio when you are in mute.
I do find it useful to know I tried to speak, and the audio bars visually indicate that I just spoke.
Hence the need for audio listening even if you are on mute.
Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off
#120Earlier quoted context omitted.
Honestly, it feels like most people here aren't reading the article. > The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music…
Because a video conferencing app with a bad UX is going to be quickly supplanted with one with a better UX; the privacy concerns of being spied on by a video conferencing app while you are muted is very minute for most people. There should be a line between "companies doing whatever they want" because of some implied "nefarious" reasons, and "companies doing whatever they want" because their customers want a better e…
Because a video conferencing app with a bad UX is going to be quickly supplanted with one with a better UX
For the vast majority of users, price beats UX. If a company can keep their app free by selling user data, they will out-compete paid alternatives, regardless of the UX.