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Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

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Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#21

Post by zyxley »

brlewis wrote: post #4

Do bugs in Houston tend to come inside in October? If so, the ad may just have been targeted at location + time of year. (I'm just tossing out a hypothesis; I have no opinion either way as to whether Facebook was listening.)

Yeah, to me this just looks like a case of false positive pattern recognition, given the relatively tiny number of conspiracy-theory-style complaints about it.

All you need is some more or less benign targeted advertising by local exterminators (for example, "age 22+", "females and married couples", "single-family dwelling", and a zip code the exterminator knows have had lots of bug complaints) and somebody happening to glance at their phone after being spooked by bugs.

(You may be creeped out by Facebook knowing what type of dwelling you live in, but that's a separate issue.)

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#22

Post by matchu »

chm wrote: post #15
r721 wrote: post #14

Facebook's explanation: >Myth: The feature listens to and stores your conversations. >Fact: Nope, no matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn’t listening to or storing your conversations. >Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fing…

That's an explanation for one single feature. They never mention if other code in the app has the ability to snoop on conversations.

Well, it categorically denies that "Facebook is always listening using your microphone," regardless of which feature we're talking about.

But that's also really easy phrasing to write a loophole for :P

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#23

Post by microtonal »

brlewis wrote: post #4

Do bugs in Houston tend to come inside in October? If so, the ad may just have been targeted at location + time of year. (I'm just tossing out a hypothesis; I have no opinion either way as to whether Facebook was listening.)

Or just a significant number of people in the same region searched for or posted about killing bugs.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#24

Post by chm »

Shish2k wrote: post #19
chm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an explanation for one single feature. They never mention if other code in the app has the ability to snoop on conversations.

I wonder if anyone makes a phone with LEDs for all hardware functions, like some laptops have LEDs which light up whenever anything accesses the built-in webcam?

That would be interesting. But having a completely modular phone with hardware kill switches would be better imo. That way you can just dismantle it when not in use. Put it back together when going out. Switch the mic on when needed etc.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#27

Post by danudey »

r721 wrote: post #14

Facebook's explanation: >Myth: The feature listens to and stores your conversations. >Fact: Nope, no matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn’t listening to or storing your conversations. >Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fing…

That's actually still pretty creepy.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#29

Post by logn »

r721 wrote: post #14

Facebook's explanation: >Myth: The feature listens to and stores your conversations. >Fact: Nope, no matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn’t listening to or storing your conversations. >Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fing…

Myth 1: they claim to not store audio or recordings. They could easily store keywords it detects from the mic.

Myth 2: they don't address what happens when you don't turn on the feature.

Edit to add: Overall they might not "listen to the mic" but they might be detecting words based audio data. It's all of matter of how you define things. Maybe to them, listening to the mic means playing an audio feed of the mic to a human being at Facebook, or software analyzing the full audio stream instead of a transformed/condensed view of the audio.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#30

Post by Chinjut »

dang wrote: post #28
Zikes wrote: post #13

"They trust me — dumb fucks." - Mark Zuckerberg

We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10361203 and marked it off-topic.

How is it off-topic? The comment Zikes was originally replying to is about users' trust in Facebook, and Zikes' comment is a notable (albeit long ago) quote from the founder of Facebook about users' trust in Facebook.
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