I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone • Hacker News Board

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#271

Post by fragmede » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #263

ComplexSystems wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of this is in the realm of "conspiracy theory." We aren't talking about the Earth being flat. Your phone is very clearly listening at all times, and sometimes activates and sends that data to servers. Given that, we can debate all day about what happens with that data - hopefully it's being treated properly - but the point is that it isn't clear, there isn't enough transparency, and there are occasionally scanda…

The reason the "phones are listening to you and targeting ads based on what you say" thing is a classic conspiracy theory is that it would take a genuine secret conspiracy to pull it off. Think about how many people would need to be in in the secret and actively lying about it: employees of phone hardware companies, and ad tech engineers, and execs at these companies, and their legal teams, and every contractor they…

you'd implement it so that each group is compartmentalized and no one can confirm the whole of the story, and only a single digit number of people know the full truth. one exec, one lawyer, one software engineer. and it'd have to be the software engineer dealing with releases, so they can modify the code last minute before it gets submitted. this presumes the CI system is unable to send apps to -Apple/Google itself, so it still has to be run by hand on your laptop (for some mysterious reason). if the code in the repo isn't able to do real-time monitoring, and if the data that gets sent to the ads team is inteltionally delayed and sufficiently anonymous that they can't tell by looking up past reports that theres real time surveillance happening, then everyone else involved could be vehemently asserting what they know, but which doesn't match the reality after the fix is put in.

I don't actually believe this, mind you, but theorizing on how you'd pull something like this off, the answer is compartmentalization.

All it would take on iOS is an innocent looking bug buried somewhere deep in any number of subsystems that make it so that the red dot for recording doesn't go on as often as it should. just a totally accidental buffer overflow that makes it fall to set the recording active flag when called a certain way. The XZ thing was down to a single character, and that's one of the most watched projects in the world. A latent iOS bug that no one's looking for

Again, not saying I believe this is even happening in the first place, just that it's not technically impossible, just highly improbable.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#272

Post by blurbleblurble » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:31 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #167

nivertech wrote: post #165

Many mobile apps use an adtech SDK which does on-device audio keyword spotting. The company making this SDK is super secretive, so not much information about it.

If "many mobile apps" use it surely some docs or other details have leaked out somewhere? Or at least a name?

I saw a whole PR release for adtech oriented keyword spotting tech like this one time, I wish I'd saved it... I can't remember the name of that particular company.

But read through this doc:

https://picovoice.ai/docs/faq/porcupine/

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#273

Post by blurbleblurble » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 6:32 PM UTC

rgovostes wrote: post #240

nivertech wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I won't disclose names. But thinking from the first principles, do you really think that all this phonetic keyword spotting[1] IP developed for defense tech in the late 90s and early 2000s was abandoned once recording entire phone conversations and doing full speech to text on them became technologically possible? I still remember lots of startups who did this stuff openly a decade ago, before Cambridge Analytica sca…

You know users have to authorize apps to use the microphone right? That pretty much limits the theoretical exposure to VoIP, camera, and translation apps. On iPhone, activating the microphone causes an icon to appear, which the app can’t hide. I think if the app is in the background, it turns the whole status bar bright red. Secondly, there is power use attribution and it would be very obvious if an app were keeping…

A lot of apps ask for it up front upon installation.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#274

Post by hollownobody » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

One option is that people you talk to look for the stuff to discuss.

E.g. person A talks about bouldering with person B. Person A then continues with their day while person B googles bouldering terms.

A and B then receive both bouldering ads. Person By because of the googling and person A because of proximity to person B.

Person A then assumes the phone spies what they say, but it doesn't. Location is enough.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#275

Post by hollownobody » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 7:39 PM UTC

linsomniac wrote: post #27

They don't need to: they can read your mind. My proof? Yesterday I was driving home and I saw an old Toyota Previa minivan and thought to myself "Oh, a Previa, you don't see those very often these days." When I got home, I started scrolling through my Google News and it showed me an advert for the new Previa. I agree with Simon: you basically aren't going to convince someone that their phone doesn't listen to you and…

Try reading Qualityland, by Marc-Uwe Kling. It's SF (funny SF) about this exact premise.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#276

Post by simonw » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

ComplexSystems wrote: post #269

simonw wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the "phones are listening to you and targeting ads based on what you say" thing is a classic conspiracy theory is that it would take a genuine secret conspiracy to pull it off. Think about how many people would need to be in in the secret and actively lying about it: employees of phone hardware companies, and ad tech engineers, and execs at these companies, and their legal teams, and every contractor they…

I don't think any such conspiracy or secret-keeping is required; one need not attribute any of this to malice which can be attributed to incompetence. There already exists a system, on everyone's phones, which is listening to audio at all times, occasionally activates in response to a wake word and runs search queries and such from it. The point of this system, when used properly, is intended to take a recording of y…

Your points 1-3 are genuinely the best good-faith explanation I've seen of how the "I saw a targeted advert based on something I said with my phone in earshot" thing might happen without it being a deliberate conspiracy between multiple parties.

I still doubt it's actually happening, but I'm not ready to 100% rule out that sequence of events.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#277

Post by simonw » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:02 PM UTC

fragmede wrote: post #271

simonw wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason the "phones are listening to you and targeting ads based on what you say" thing is a classic conspiracy theory is that it would take a genuine secret conspiracy to pull it off. Think about how many people would need to be in in the secret and actively lying about it: employees of phone hardware companies, and ad tech engineers, and execs at these companies, and their legal teams, and every contractor they…

you'd implement it so that each group is compartmentalized and no one can confirm the whole of the story, and only a single digit number of people know the full truth. one exec, one lawyer, one software engineer. and it'd have to be the software engineer dealing with releases, so they can modify the code last minute before it gets submitted. this presumes the CI system is unable to send apps to -Apple/Google itself,…

An interesting thing about that compartmentalization approach is that it would open a company that implemented it up to much more severe problems.

If your organization structure allows a tiny number of people to modify your deployed products in that way, the same tricks could be used by agents of foreign powers to inject government spyware.

That's a threat that companies the size of Apple need to be very cognizant of. If I was designing build processes at a company like that I'd be much more concerned about avoiding ways for a tiny group to mess with the build, as opposed to designing in processes like that just so I could do something creepy with the ad targeting.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#278

Post by FrustratedMonky » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:07 PM UTC

simonw wrote: post #256

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"How would it do that? " AI. That is entire premise of 'Nexis' from Yuval Harari. Individualized bot driven surveillance . https://www.theregister.com/2024/09/16/oracle_ai_mass_survei... ""Ellison declares Oracle all-in on AI mass surveillance, says it'll keep everyone in line Cops to citizens will be 'on their best behavior because we're constantly recording and reporting'""

How were they doing this in 2017?

A lot of things are happening now that happened before. That doesn't mean things don't improve. Increased efficiency is the issue now. In 2017, maybe some simple algorithms, or a person, was intervening to drive ads, now AI is a big step change in better targeting.

That was one of the points in the book. in 2017 or before, a surveillance state was limited by the number of people it takes to do the actual surveillance . Now AI increases the efficiency.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#279

Post by rgovostes » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:10 PM UTC

blurbleblurble wrote: post #273

rgovostes wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You know users have to authorize apps to use the microphone right? That pretty much limits the theoretical exposure to VoIP, camera, and translation apps. On iPhone, activating the microphone causes an icon to appear, which the app can’t hide. I think if the app is in the background, it turns the whole status bar bright red. Secondly, there is power use attribution and it would be very obvious if an app were keeping…

A lot of apps ask for it up front upon installation.

On iOS apps must provide a reason for requesting it which appears in the prompt. App Review makes sure the reason is justified. A library might be able to opportunistically piggyback on this permission but again the mic indicator would be on. It would more than likely be discovered and the app banned.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#280

Post by epolanski » Sat, Jan 04, 2025, 8:41 PM UTC

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

The most striking example happened to me while watching a documentary about siberian cats.

We were watching it in Italian, our main language, and I wanted to know more about it, as I typed "g", the first result was "gatto siberiano", exactly the cat I was looking for. Way too specific.

Another time as my girlfriend said she was interested how much a specific model of a watch a friend of him costed, the very same happened, as I typed the first few letters the very watch brand and model appeared.

Since then, I just don't care about how much technical description I can read, nothing's gonna convince me of it being a coincidence.