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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

#201

Post by alpaca128 »

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)”

> 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 are so certain that it definitely happens, why didn't dozens of people already prove it with a fresh Google/Apple account and phone?

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

#202

Post by danielrhodes »

abdullahkhalids wrote: post #175
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…

While I think that audio recording is not a thing, your economic argument is not complete. What if only the audio of "high value" targets is recorded. Meaning people who buy a lot of stuff. So it might be worthwhile to only record their sounds. Which will explain why random testing (usually with new/clean phones) is never successful in detecting a recording event.

I think this is a genuine concern for prominent people. Like if you are Mark Zuckerberg, there is material interest in a bad actor installing malware on his laptop. But for a random person where you get low value data that may or may not let you better target some low value ads? That is much harder to justify. Would have to reevaluate as things change and the cost of compute goes down.

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

#203

Post by anenefan »

simonw wrote: post #56
number6 wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A swan can't stop a hurricane

OK wow that actually fits here. https://simonwillison.net/2025/Apr/23/meaning-slop/

lol so it's getting that bad. Assigning meaning to random phrases is BS. If it keeps on going it'll start attributing meaning to misspelled words.

LLMs are only as good or bad as they are created - or their function / parameters? Google got real sad mid 00s - it's all about the money now isn't it.

Topic recently [1] re Google A.I. BSing.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43748171 ('Epistemological Slop: Lies, Damned Lies, and Google' - )

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

#204

Post by alpaca128 »

torben-friis wrote: post #197
immibis wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m not even sure that’s possible for some sites. A few years ago I tried to create a separate digital footprint from scratch (just an experiment out of boredom when my isp offered a second number for free). I used an ultra cheap never before used android phone and set it up outside my home. Google went nuts. All sorts of captchas, security checks and attempts to link me to other information popping up on every step.…

Apple secretly linked my account to my >15 year old inactive account as well as another random account that isn't even mine. Nothing happened of it until I let my iPhone sync its settings to a new iPad. The iPad spammed a password input form for my old account that blocked all other UI elements. It didn't accept any password even after a password reset. Took me an hour to make the tablet usable again. The password form still randomly pops up every few weeks and there seems to be no way to fix the mess.

Bonus: the iPad's device name is now "My iPhone" because it also synced the device name from the phone.

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

#205

Post by DrillShopper »

kelnos wrote: post #174
DrillShopper wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amtrak and Greyhound do not require those biometrics, nor does renting a car and driving (or driving your own).

Some of us want to be able to cross the country in an afternoon, and not have to spend days on a slow, uncomfortable train to make the same trip. I don't think that's unreasonable.

Private and charter aviation exists and is free from those constraints.

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

#206

Post by walterbell »

dyauspitr wrote: post #199
walterbell wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Privacy-seeking users have physically removed microphones from phones. This should also be possible with laptops and televisions. If Toshiba Fire TV is related to Amazon Fire TV, then it may include Alexa for voice recognition, which could be optionally disabled. In theory, Alexa is only activated after on-device recognition of the configured wake word.

Removed microphones from… phones ? How do you use the phone then?

Headset.

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

#207

Post by milesrout »

hammock wrote: post #180
derefr wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For all of these reasons, audio snooping is much more likely to be something done by wired, stationary devices that maybe have a decent amount of RAM + a fair bit of usually-idle processing capacity (to run the transcription model locally and just push the resulting text), and which are expected to draw a decent amount of power and use the Internet at vaguely-arbitrary times. Like a smart TV, for example.

It is 1000% being done by smart TVs. They listen even when you are not using the voice remote. And the data is used to target ads (anywhere)

Do you have any evidence?

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

#208

Post by userbinator »

hammock wrote: post #177
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...

The article omits a real, serious source of microphone data though: your smart TV. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my TV (a Toshiba Fire TV, although I’m sure many do it) is listening to every conversation I have within earshot, even when I am not using the voice remote, and selling it to ad networks. And of course it is also doing screen recognition (the kind of stuff OP article mentions), but that is not wha…

Who would even want a microphone in a TV?

It's like that old Soviet Russia joke, except it's not a joke.

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

#209

Post by mulderc »

bsimpson wrote: post #145
LgWoodenBadger wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s similar with the TSA facial recognition photos. “We delete your photo immediately” but what they don’t say is that they don’t delete the biometrics from that photo.

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

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

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

#210

Post by sanswork »

intended wrote: post #105

What rot. Here’s a simple experiment I ran and still works. Back in the day there was a truly ghastly add for ear wax removal that showed up on YouTube in the UK. In an experiment, and prank, I told two of my close friends about this, and how this horrid advert would kill my appetite when it came up. And then I made it a point to repeat “ear wax removal” loudly several times. Sure enough. A day later my dear friend m…

Or you told your friend about this horrible ad and they looked it up without thinking and got added to the retargeting list.
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