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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

#311

Post by GekkePrutser »

Gigachad wrote: post #236
Edd314159 wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ironically this is a good use case for a Touch Bar: a button on your keyboard that is only there _sometimes_ because it’s only needed in certain contexts (when you’re on a call)

The touch bar is like an idea that works really well in your head. It has so many theoretical cool uses. But in reality I end up never using it for anything.. I would have been happy if the new one had the touch bar and the function keys, but that would have been extra cost for a feature people just aren't using.

I liked the touch bar..

The problem was that it was too much of a tradeoff. Either a touch bar or function keys. I need function keys. The touch bar was useless for this purpose (no tactile feel).

Apple could easily have done both. There's more than enough space even on the 13" macbooks. It would have taken a bit of space from the vertical range of the touchpad but it's already comically large anyway.

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

#312

Post by GekkePrutser »

SllX wrote: post #185
trelane wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My first introduction to Zoom was their malware-like pre-install install. https://twitter.com/c1truz_/status/1244737672930824193

That was March 2020? This is from July 2019: https://daringfireball.net/linked/2019/07/10/zoom After they were called out, supposedly they fixed it, but that tweet you just linked looks like more of the same nonsense which goes right back to my original point: reputation matters. If the first could be taken as honestly naïve, the second proves it was not. Zoom doesn’t go on anything I own or control.

For me the problem was that they were called out about the backdoor they installed on Macs, and then totally refused to do anything about it, and it took Apple to actually incorporate a system update to remove Zoom's malware.

I understand 'mistakes' happen (though this was way too elaborate to be a mistake). But to just shrug it off and refuse to do anything when it's discovered is just total ignorance of security.

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

#313

Post by ajsnigrutin »

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…

Yep, plus on many apps, if you're speaking while muted, a popup/toaster will show, notifying you that you're muted and if you want to unmute.

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

#314

Post by gwinsyth »

smugma wrote: post #212

One valid use case for this is for the software to detect when you're speaking while on mute and notify you that "you're on mute". Maybe I dreamed it up, but I thought I've seen this before (WebEx?). I could imagine a soft-mute feature where you're on mute when you're not talking (perhaps to keep down on background noise) but if your app detects that you're actively talking, it will unmute you. It might lose the firs…

MS Teams has the "you're on mute" notification.

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

#315

Post by scurraorbis »

victimblamer wrote: post #132
Sakos wrote: post #68

Earlier 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? I manage some properties for a family member on the side, one of which is in a very bad neighborhood. When I travel to this neighborhood I have a certain state of alertness that I would not normally have in my boring suburbistani neighborhood. This is better known as "situational awareness" - the man approaching me in my own neighborhood is l…

No post body was provided.

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

#316

Post by scurraorbis »

Sakos wrote: post #68
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…

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's amazing how many people down thread simply ignore or minimize what you point out here. And this on the same site where people get mad about the wrong kind of cookie which they always had full control over anyways ...

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

#317

Post by [deleted] »

gwbas1c wrote: post #106
Isthatablackgsd wrote: post #97

As a Deaf person, the notification annoyed the heck out of me and there are not even an option to disable the notification. I muted my mic because I am Deaf and I don't use my voice to communicate with my fellow Deaf friends over Zoom/Teams. And there is no option to disable Zoom joining-room audio (the one that when you join the room, Zoom present the option to ask which microphone you want to enable). Why would I n…

Then why mute yourself? Even more interesting: Why do you prefer to sign over video instead of typing? Are there forms of expression that are more natural that way?

[deleted]

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

#318

Post by scurraorbis »

UncleMeat wrote: post #88
Sakos wrote: post #68

Earlier 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…

If your VC software decides to perform signal processing on the microphone input while it is running but you are muted then yes, it can determine things about your behavior. But that's true for literally all applications running on your computer. Evil software running on your machine can do all sorts of bad things.

If software that actually exists is really already sending "telemetry" that can reliably identify your activities in the real world the concern isn't that theoretical anymore.

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

#319

Post by VariableStar »

Sometimes the best security is to go low-tech. At the risk of not being original, I vote for a mechanical/physical hardware switch for microphone, and a manual lid/lock for the camera (or chewing gum, but it will leave marks :-) )

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

#320

Post by andylynch »

julienb_sea wrote: post #139
ortusdux wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is not how enterprise software works. Audited data privacy is a core selling point of enterprise communication systems like Slack and Zoom, which are able to charge a lot of money for enterprise licenses and have very viable business models. You're right that this may not work in the consumer space, but that battle is already lost -- there are myriad free communication options available to consumers such as mess…

Zoom’s better than it used to be, still some big orgs and their IT security treat it (with some justification and I think informed paranoia) as something to be tolerated due to client demand and avoided for anything sensitive.
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