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

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

#231

Post by caminanteblanco »

Spooky23 wrote: post #131
limbero wrote: post #98

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...

There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious. Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

Except for the fact that if you read the debunkings, they go into great detail as to why that is empirically not the case.

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

#232

Post by AtlasBarfed »

alpaca128 wrote: post #201
Spooky23 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious. Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

> There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared Not really. 99% of the time it's someone claiming that it happens. And it's always an anecdote, never clear proof that it happened. Let alone that it happened because of the audio and not web activity. And that the conversation was actually the cause for the ad and not the other way around. Is it technically possible? Sure. But if so many people…

Here is an example that just happened today. I talked to my partner about me going to a city directly (via one state) or indirectly (via another state). All I said was "so you want me to go directly to X".

Boom, Illinois tourism ad shows up the next time I hit the internet. Scary thing is I didn't even say the state name, just the destination, and SOMETHING calculated that Illinois is in the middle.

This stuff has now happened far too many times in the last 10 years of my life, it is simply implausible to call it coincidence at this point. You are being listened to by your phone.

Ad firms have no ethical boundaries, and have lied about their data collection over and over.

What is really frightening is that if the ad companies know everything about you, then multiple state actors also know everything about you.

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

#234

Post by cbogie »

it’s just ai llm snooping amd doing big ol compute just like we have access to now. but advertisers had it years ago cuz they paid and at large, ads sold.

became so prevalent no differentiable value so the algos etc sought new omg human public users. magic baby. but just hungry ip sw gobbling up new worlds.

maybe. just thinking outloud.

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

#235

Post by ipaddr »

dangus wrote: post #214
Spooky23 wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious. Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

There is a small list of reasons why it needs to be "debunked:" 1. Your phone is gathering data that you don't realize that it gathers. One of the biggest examples of this is real-time location data that is brokered by cellular carriers and sold as aggregated marketing data. You don't have to give your apps permission to do anything like that because your cellular carrier can get that data regardless of your phone's…

That's much worse compared to listening for keywords. You're looking up men's enhancement products and everytime you enter a room all ads on everyone's phone change to those products?

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

#236

Post by rubatuga »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #232
alpaca128 wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared Not really. 99% of the time it's someone claiming that it happens. And it's always an anecdote, never clear proof that it happened. Let alone that it happened because of the audio and not web activity. And that the conversation was actually the cause for the ad and not the other way around. Is it technically possible? Sure. But if so many people…

Here is an example that just happened today. I talked to my partner about me going to a city directly (via one state) or indirectly (via another state). All I said was "so you want me to go directly to X". Boom, Illinois tourism ad shows up the next time I hit the internet. Scary thing is I didn't even say the state name, just the destination, and SOMETHING calculated that Illinois is in the middle. This stuff has no…

Confirmation bias at its finest

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

#237

Post by intended »

paulcole wrote: post #138
intended wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. But its fun, and we can always replicate, just need a terrible ad. Do note, this was tested in a park, so no shared WiFi, no Bluetooth beacons/devices. Also, this ad doesn’t/didn’t show up for others, ever.

I’m assuming like most friends you and your friends have nothing in common like interests, demographics, etc.? And I’m assuming you also made them aware of other ads you’d seen recently so they could see if those showed up as well?

Yep. They 100% do not share an interest in ear wax removal, or had a medical need of that nature.

Why do you think I would put up a comment on HN of all places, with this degree of confidence.

> tested with other ads… If I knew that this, was going to be needed to study, 5 years into the future, I would have conducted a double blind study. Sadly I could not, however, it’s still fun, so we can always replicate.

The question is, have you found a horrid ad yet? Side note, this was in the UK

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

#238

Post by asteroidburger »

gruez wrote: post #162
spunker540 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same with drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too

>drivers licenses and passports having a photo requirement too You're free to take the bus, or hire a chauffeur. A private pilots license doesn't have any pictures either.

A US pilot certificate itself does not include a photo, but you must have a photo ID to use it. https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-14/part-61/section-61.3#p...

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

#239

Post by arcfour »

caminanteblanco wrote: post #230
bsimpson wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a crime that were compelled to concede our 4th Amendment rights in order to travel.

It literally says right on the facial recognition sign that you're free to opt out, just let the TSA employee know

The TSA is - objectively, by their own audits - complete security theater. Why bother to defend them, exactly?

Also, the spirit of the 4th Amendment is most certainly not "here, this is the easy way!" (yes, we are conducting mass surveillance but you can sort of opt out of one piece of it by going through a manual process over here that we will make you feel like you are burdening us by requesting)

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

#240

Post by Supermancho »

BenjiWiebe wrote: post #129
wormius wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This... I have had on at least 2 occasions explicitly where I know for a fact I hadn't searched or looked up this topic on any system, and I brought up a topic and talked to my roommate and within the next 12 hours FB served me ads or content relating to the topic. I get the idea that an "always on" monitoring system would be problematic (even if you discarded the data itself and only retained/filtered relevant bits…

Did the roommate use the same WiFi network as you, and your roommate used the WiFi to research it?

Well, since my data comes from my wife and I (we have nobody else) and we didn't look up Deadpool (ever) because she doesn't care and I don't talk to her about it because I know she doesn't care. We see Deadpool advertised playing at a theater on the marqui, so I call it out

Me: "I would go watch Deadpool with my best friend Z if he was in town today".

Me: "Did you hear they have a Deadpool dog? Dogpool!" (saw the trailer from my desktop at work)

Wife: "I don't care about a Deadpool dog. You should definitely go see it with Z."

About 2 hours later. Ads for Deadpool litter her Facebook. Deadpool had been out for 2 weeks. Why now? Because we talked about it in the car while she was on Facebook. I've worked in Adtech since about 2005. It's the phone and or the app. Our Google TV does the same thing, except Youtube doesn't seem to be affected by conversation. So that's something.

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