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

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

#311

Post by anenefan » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 1:58 AM UTC

brody_hamer wrote: post #305

anenefan wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

His phone would have to be running a hotspot for any visitors (in many parts of the rural area in my locale, mobile data is it for the internet) but if any visitors were with the same carrier network, visitors could have searched. However it's entirely improbable any of his buddies would be on their phone while they're there unless it was a legit interest. Secondly this is stuff from what I gathered, some of is stuff…

I’m basing my reasoning on the assumption that advertisers (such as google, meta, tictoc) are aware of your location at all times . (See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42909921 ) Based on this assumption, it wouldn’t be necessary for any of your friends to search for the topic during an evening together.. it would simply be enough that one of the friends showed some interest in the topic prior to the hangout (…

I'd agree on assuming that certain apps do or try as best they can with an aim to track not only location but presence of other wifi bluethooth device ids with time stamps, to help build patterns and a unique fingerprint for marketing purposes - on the basis it can once the app is given (accidentally perhaps) the necessary permissions.

As such, if location or device id data were available to build a larger picture, for any sort of common topic I'd agree the advertising could easily be a result of data analysis of various subsets of phones in a given region, applying algorithms and feeding it back into search results.

However like I said, the stuff was apparently way way out there zany - he ensured me he would ever bother searching for it. So zany in fact no one would ever bother. For all I know he may have ruled out other people and have just been talking to his pet dog and various other tame native animals that hang around his verandah. I would tend to believe way way out there as after a small smoke around me he's dribbling worthless bs. There's no low bar on my part either - something like if polka dot dogs exist I could accept as something that might / could be searched the next day by anyone who was involved in such a out there conversation, and as a result skew search results.

Any how I'm settled on it's one of the many worthless apps on his phone that exists because a website is not desktop friendly - as they say if the service is free, you're the product ...

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

#312

Post by Spooky23 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 2:56 AM UTC

gf000 wrote: post #246

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> You are being listened to by your phone. This would simply eat the battery immediately, it's simply not feasible and given all the other, cheap tracking it wouldn't even be beneficial.

Not in 2025. I often record long duration meetings and working sessions with iOS voice memos. There’s no noticeable impact.

You could easily record and do a fast voice transcription to gather keywords from a hardware perspective.

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

#313

Post by gaadd33 » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 4:16 AM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #289

mulderc wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends on the type of travel right? I took Amtrak weekly for several years and never even had to show ID.

Did this change? Last time I tried to take them (ten+ years ago, because my license expired) they refused my ticket purchase because my id was expired.

Less than 6 months ago I was able to buy a ticket online and board without showing any ID and have done that for 10+ years with no problem.

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

#314

Post by strogonoff » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 5:16 AM UTC

afiori wrote: post #308

Aurornis wrote: post #302

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often does someone look at their phone over 5-6 years? Having one incidence where you’re talking about something and then you also see that something on your phone out of 2000 days of using a phone is definitely more likely to be coincidence.

How often do you think this person did experiments? It is a study with n=1 but the unrelated metric of how many times something else happens does not influence the likelihood of a false positive

Only did it once. The likelihood of coincidence is low, because the topic was specific and unusual.

Here’s something relevant in Google’s current support KB[0], where the combination of the following further supports that the experiment did not have be staged (emphasis mine):

> Web & App Activity saves your searches and activity from other Google services in your Google Account. You may get more personalized experiences, like: Content recommendations

> When Web & App Activity is on, you can include audio recordings from your interactions with Google Search, Assistant, and Maps as part of your activity.

Let’s now go back to the experiment. Given the phone was unlocked, voice activity was enabled, and Google app or search widget was on Google Pixel’s screen (I am certain at least the latter was true) during the experiment, could talking near the phone be counted as “interaction”? If the answer is “yes” then it seems very reasonable for us[1] to expect, per that KB, that the app would listen more actively than what’s required for assistant activation, and that recorded snippets would count as your “activity” designed to affect content recommendations (including the article feed Google app showed to us on its app’s main screen).

No tinfoil hat required.

***

Note that it does not mention ads among personalized experiences[2], and we had not observed any change in the ads either. I didn’t see what exactly counts as “interaction” or whether this blazing-fast content personalization used to include ads previously, but in line with the “move fast” culture of mid-2010s Silicon Valley it could well have been much more lax at some point. If so, I do not envy all the people who have observed it only to be gaslit and mocked by peers and media.

***

As to the article I was vaguely remembering in my original comment, the above makes me think that it was merely about the change of the default to opt-in, which it is as of today:

> This voice and audio activity setting is off unless you choose to turn it on.

[0] https://support.google.com/websearch/answer/54068?hl=en&co=G...

[1] Us tech people; this might not at all align with the intuition of other people.

[2] I rather suspect that ToS and possibly some other KB article would indicate that your activity would, in fact, affect your interest profile and by extension ads, but probably in a much less obvious and more gradual fashion.

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

#315

Post by coldtea » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 6:57 AM UTC

hammock wrote: post #285

coldtea wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You can opt out, just say you do And then be flagged and 10x more targeted because of that

Not how it works

Oh, sweet summer child

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

#316

Post by kurthr » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

Aurornis wrote: post #301

kurthr wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree it's a different algorithm, but not a higher powered one. You don't need to know context to get HELOC, Bariatric, or DUI. You also don't need 95%+ accuracy for 95% of the population. You're just doing advertising.

Doing 100 different matches updated frequently is an entirely different problem than matching a single wake word that isn’t changing. Regardless, this would require so much coordination, network traffic, and on-device code that could be reverse engineered that you’re implying that nobody has every found a hint of it existing and no employees of these companies have ever leaked any hints of it existing. It’s very much…

Well, actually when you're hash based doing 100 different matches is the easy part. I'm not sure you know how steep FAR/FRR curves are for >99%/95% singe word accuracy, but having seen wake word development it's easily 100x harder than 95%/90% accuracy and none of the heavy calculation other than voice compression needs to be done locally or in a short time period. The network traffic is literally a few hundred hashes downloaded and hundreds of bits of hash matches a day (~1kB).

Even in the article there are multiple reports of it that are dismissed, and even though reverse engineering larger apps on iPhone/Android is certainly possible, with obfuscation searching for yet another hash table matching or simple voice compression is also quite difficult. Where are all the other articles reporting on the reverse engineering the very screencap apps this article talked about? Are they also just more well documented conspiracy theories?

Frankly, your best argument is that nobody is selling this as a product. So maybe there are easier more effective methods, but not because it can't or hasn't been done (since it literally has and it's been reported). It's kinda the opposite of a conspiracy theory. You have to assume that everyone capable with a vested interest won't do it, or that all of them will be caught, or that making money with ads becomes unpopular.

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

#317

Post by jeffhuys » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

sroussey wrote: post #279

jeffhuys wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s cool, but on iPhones, there is no indicator LIGHT. Only part of the screen indicates it. And if they can trigger stuff on your phone, maybe a daemon that accidentally covers that part with black also appears, and you wouldn’t notice.

Nope, it interfaces directly with the display driver and overwrites anything from user land or the OS.

That's actually amazing, didn't know that. Do you have an article with some more info on it? Love to read about this stuff.

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

#318

Post by jsbisviewtiful » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 6:25 PM UTC

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)”

Not saying this is true, but the amount of time and effort put into saying "no one is listening to you" could be attributed to the novel 1984, where the government is actively listening to its citizens. Enough people could associate the novel with government surveillance that it's what people interpret as the most likely surveillance happening - and enough people don't understand tech that it's lost on them that a) the tech to actively listen to millions of people constantly doesn't exist at the appropriate level to be effective b) there are significantly more and far more effective ways to monitor people with current tech than via microphone. It's truly unfortunate people don't understand tech to realize what's actually possible and what is actively happening vs what they imagine could be happening

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

#319

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 7:06 PM UTC

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 purpose is to gather biometric data on people that will be used for future surveillance in our incipient fascist state with the implicit statement that opting out is suspicious and will lead to greater scrutiny.

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

#320

Post by michaelmrose » Mon, Apr 28, 2025, 7:12 PM UTC

HaZeust wrote: post #288

Spooky23 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can also walk. Lovers of freedom can walk from Manhattan to LA in 40-50 days. Of course if you look “wrong”, you’ll probably get rounded up in some flyover town.

I wonder what the chances of surviving that trip is, based on walking pedestrian fatalities on highways.

Depends on where you walk the US is amazingly poorly situated for long walks outside of major cities. Sidewalks disappear first then lighting then one is liable to run into major stretches with no safe affordance for walking whatsoever where one is either inches from cars or in a ditch.