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You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

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Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#191

Post by willcipriano »

notreallyserio wrote: post #189
ghostpepper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…

There's a weird culture around reporting problems without reporting names. You see it a lot here on HN and occasionally in media. I'll never understand. Why bother talking about corporate misbehavior (or etc) and not back it up with the basic, minimal data you could provide?

Makes claims impossible to falsify, without naming names nobody can poke holes in your analysis.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#192

Post by zarzavat »

SkyPuncher wrote: post #10

I 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…

> I'd be somewhat willing to bet continue to stream audio is also a quality assurance mechanism. Some networks will shape traffic according to load. A quick jump in bandwidth can introduce unexpected jitter and latency. By continuing to stream audio (but not necessarily process or re-transmit), video conferencing can better ensure an un-interupted experience.

They don't have to actually send the data though in this case they should just send 0 padding. It's all encrypted presumably, so the only externally observable factor is the packet size.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#193

Post by mitchdoogle »

notreallyserio wrote: post #189
ghostpepper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…

There's a weird culture around reporting problems without reporting names. You see it a lot here on HN and occasionally in media. I'll never understand. Why bother talking about corporate misbehavior (or etc) and not back it up with the basic, minimal data you could provide?

Maybe their research is ongoing, maybe they are afraid of being sued, maybe they'd rather not harm a company so reputation without fully understanding why they do this

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#194

Post by charcircuit »

pmoriarty wrote: post #165
SkyPuncher wrote: post #10

I 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…

"if you really care about privacy, consider getting a hardware mute microphone" Even if you get an external microphone which can be muted, if you're on a laptop you'll still have an internal microphone which can't be muted except through software. What we really need are laptops sold without microphones and cameras. Then you can just use external ones only, and be sure that no one's listening/looking when you unplug…

Usually software only captures one mic at a time.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#195

Post by Nextgrid »

lxgr wrote: post #44
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #11

> “With a camera, you can turn it off or even put your hand over it, and no matter what you do, no one can see you,” says Fawaz. “I don’t think that exists for microphones.” Maybe it doesn't exist on whatever sleek glassy slabs they're working with, but the old Thinkpad, Elitebook, and Precision workstation laptops I have around me at the moment all have dedicated microphone mute buttons (the Precision has a Fn key c…

On my Thinkpad, this was still just interpreted as an OS-level keyboard shortcut, as far as I remember. A solution that actually (logically if not physically) deactivates any built-in microphone would arguably be at least as important as a "webcam shield". Apple does this for the built-in microphone for their newer laptops, but that benefit is immediately negated when e.g. connecting a USB webcam that also contains a…

On my T480s the mic mute button is handled in hardware/low-level firmware however all it does is set the mic input level to 0%, where the OS can trivially set it back to 100% if it wants.

At least the LED on the button is driven by firmware based on that level, so it lights up only when the mic level is actually at 0%. While it won't prevent the OS from raising the volume, at least you'll know about it as the mute light will go off.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#196

Post by sharken »

notreallyserio wrote: post #189
ghostpepper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…

There's a weird culture around reporting problems without reporting names. You see it a lot here on HN and occasionally in media. I'll never understand. Why bother talking about corporate misbehavior (or etc) and not back it up with the basic, minimal data you could provide?

They state that their findings will be presented at Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July. So it seems they want to keep some info for that event.

Should i hazard a guess, it would be either Zoom or Teams.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#197

Post by mitchdoogle »

throwawayboise wrote: post #186
autoexec wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously, who in their right mind is using Zoom at this point? They've been "accidentally" collecting people's data, disclosing people's data to others, and have been caught lying so many times there's nearly zero chance that it's just total incompetence and even if it were, why use something made by people who are that bad at their job? There are so many alternatives, how is it Zoom has any business at all?

> how is it Zoom has any business at all? Zoom was the first videoconferencing software I experienced where the first 15 minutes of the meeting was not spent with "can you see me," "can you hear me," some people falling back to dialing in to a speakerphone, and one or more out-of-band calls to various participants to troubleshoot problems. Zoom was click a link. And it worked. Nobody cared much about anything else be…

Perhaps I am misremembering but I remember using Skype 9-10 years ago without any issues. Zoom does not seem to be that much of an improvement in terms of ease of use

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#198

Post by conradev »

This is something that should be solved at the operating system level.

macOS has an orange indicator light when the microphone is active, and Control Center shows which app is using it.

Platforms are responsible for controlling access to the microphone, so they should let users know when it is active, too.

Re: You’re muted – or are you? Videoconferencing apps may listen when mic is off

#200

Post by toyg »

e40 wrote: post #184
ghostpepper wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not." The way I read that is, only one of the apps actually sends audio data to the server when the mic is muted. I'm not sure why they don't say which one, and I'm not sur…

> I'm not sure why they don't say which one Yeah, that's very annoying. Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak. It's a very nice thing. I have a microphone (that wasn't expensive) that has a hardware mute. I use it when I really want to make sure I'm not heard, even for "speaking" detection.

> Zoom, for example, will tell you, when you are muted and you begin to speak

MS Teams has that feature too.

TBH I'm not surprised: when you mute the mic in an app, you're still letting the app in control. If you really want to be safe, you need to mute at OS level or in hardware. That's why cameras have a hardware cover in modern laptops.

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