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Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

newatlas.com

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Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#91

Post by viraptor »

kevinsync wrote: post #89
viraptor wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how I immediately get served ads relevant to text typed into (presumably-encrypted) iMessage conversations? Are you using a third party keyboard? Or any apps you don't 100% trust if you sent the message from a Mac?

Nope, regular iOS/macOS on all ends. Literally just stock Apple Messages on devices. I just notice sometimes topics will come up (what appears to me to be randomly) and then relevant ads and/or content will appear on Instagram or web. I guess it's possible that, to me, it appears "organic" (ex. somebody just mentions Taco Bell or whatever) but they had actually been searching on their device, and since our digital pr…

If you have specific situations where it's reproducible, you can record your DNS and connections on local network and try again. You can only prove/disprove that with enough experiments.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#92

Post by Etheryte »

ThinkBeat wrote: post #77

At the time I am typing this, the title on the page is: ""Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing"" Which is presently also the title on this post. Then as I read it becomes clear that it is merely focusing on Facebook. However the confusion that may stem from "Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you" The blog post never attempts to establish that your phone is not listening to…

In aggregate, your phone is not listening to you, but if you are of great interest to a powerful adversary, it very well might be. But at that point, I would wager that's one of the smaller things on your plate.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#93

Post by danielrhodes »

People seem to ignore the cost and accuracy aspects of a phone listening to you 24/7. At least with today’s constraints, it is highly unlikely to be happening.

First, the cost to transcribe audio is not free. It is computationally expensive. Any ad network or at scale service would not be able to afford it, especially in orgs where they are concerned about unit economics.

Secondly, the accuracy would be horrible. Most of the time, your phone is in your pocket and would pick up almost nothing. More over, it’s not like you are talking about anything of value to advertisers in most cases. Google is a money printing machine because people search with an intent to buy. The SNR of normal conversation is much much much lower. That makes the unit economics of doing this gets much worse.

Third, it would be pretty hard to not notice this was happening. Your phone would get hot, your battery would deplete very quickly, and you’d be using a lot of data. Moreover on iOS you could see the mic is being used and the OS would likely kill the app if it was using too many resources in the background.

So until we find an example of this actually happening, it’s not worth worrying about.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#94

Post by hyperpape »

mindcrash wrote: post #85

Way back then I exposed massive data collection from Twitter by Google which made it possible to plot locations at which you used Twitter in Google Maps by simply putting your Twitter handle into the search field. Somehow they knew about these locations even when you opted out of sharing location data with Twitter (I checked) -- so this was only possible by Twitter privately providing this information to Google. This…

It's really indefensible to post this without linking to your research to show people what you found.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#95

Post by mindcrash »

hyperpape wrote: post #94
mindcrash wrote: post #85

Way back then I exposed massive data collection from Twitter by Google which made it possible to plot locations at which you used Twitter in Google Maps by simply putting your Twitter handle into the search field. Somehow they knew about these locations even when you opted out of sharing location data with Twitter (I checked) -- so this was only possible by Twitter privately providing this information to Google. This…

It's really indefensible to post this without linking to your research to show people what you found.

Believe it or not, I wrote about it on my now permanently suspended Twitter account.

Here is a remnant from someone who replied at the time:

https://xcancel.com/kpcuk/status/601451439215353857

By the way: somewhat later we (thanks to a group effort) figured out it wasn't "just" Chrome as mentioned, and this basically led to the strong assumption there was some serious data sharing involved.

And yes that screenshot from this person is 100% real; my pins for example were sprinkled all across Brighton in the UK near places with Wifi access (I recently went on a city trip there at the time), and my home town in the Netherlands.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#96

Post by mindcrash »

immibis wrote: post #86
mindcrash wrote: post #85

Way back then I exposed massive data collection from Twitter by Google which made it possible to plot locations at which you used Twitter in Google Maps by simply putting your Twitter handle into the search field. Somehow they knew about these locations even when you opted out of sharing location data with Twitter (I checked) -- so this was only possible by Twitter privately providing this information to Google. This…

Doesn't every site route every support request for every reason into the digital trash can? You're supposed to just make a new account, using as many mechanisms as possible to make sure the site can't link it to your old account.

Someone from X Support replied, basically told me to fuck off and that this would happen after my second or third appeal... so no.

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#97

Post by monkeyfun »

mindcrash wrote: post #85

Way back then I exposed massive data collection from Twitter by Google which made it possible to plot locations at which you used Twitter in Google Maps by simply putting your Twitter handle into the search field. Somehow they knew about these locations even when you opted out of sharing location data with Twitter (I checked) -- so this was only possible by Twitter privately providing this information to Google. This…

Could you link to some of it? Sounds extremely interesting!

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#98

Post by limbero »

This article reminds me of this excellent tongue-in-cheek piece of writing by Jonathan Zeller in McSweeney's:

Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/calm-down-your-phone-isn...

Re: Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

#99

Post by scrose »

danielrhodes wrote: post #93

People seem to ignore the cost and accuracy aspects of a phone listening to you 24/7. At least with today’s constraints, it is highly unlikely to be happening. First, the cost to transcribe audio is not free. It is computationally expensive. Any ad network or at scale service would not be able to afford it, especially in orgs where they are concerned about unit economics. Secondly, the accuracy would be horrible. Mos…

These are all points that were brought up in the article as to why voice recording is less useful than all of the other tracking mechanisms advertisers have available
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