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Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

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Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#31

Post by shostack »

Jemaclus wrote: post #5

The obvious reason is that your friends are searching for things. When you talk to your friends and your friend mentions that he's going through a divorce, the odds are great that he's looked up a divorce lawyer online, because you're friends, FB figures you'd be interested in the same thing and starts serving you ads for divorce attorneys. Or if your friend is renovating his house and does a search for new cabinets,…

OP updated this to specify that they saw cockroaches and immediately after saw the ads without searching at all.

The coincidence is certainly odd, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially if this isn't the first time they've had cockroaches (ie. they might be in a demographic/audience segment likely to have these issues and be frequently targeted).

I would also add that FBX partners can leverage a massive amount of 3rd party data, such as search retargeting vendors that can serve ads as quickly as seconds after you've searched for something on one of the data sources they partner with (engines, toolbars, etc.).

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#32

Post by olefoo »

tomf64 wrote: post #6

This is somewhat anecdotal but with the latest iOS and Facebook app versions, Facebook doesn't even show up on the list of apps that have requested to use my microphone. Unless they found some exploit to bypass Apple's restrictions and use my microphone without even asking for permission, I seriously doubt they're listening to users.

Leaving out the possibility that Facebook and Apple have agreements that let Facebook bypass restrictions that other vendors are subject too.

Remember that Apple is not a government and can and does show favoritism in how it relates to developers selling through their system.

Although the prospect of Google, Facebook or Apple doing always on Voice Recognition seems unlikely in terms of bandwidth and power requirements.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#33

Post by jetskindo »

There is always the possibility of Facebook listening to conversation. But it is also possible to figure out your interest using context time travel. Google does it all the time.[1]

> Imagine scaling this idea. Imagine you know everything a person goes through. Everything. In the right context, you will be able to predict everything this person does. By studying his past, you can determine his thoughts all the time. Here is something that happened to me a few years ago.

> I've watched a Mexican show on YouTube for a few month. Let's call it a soap opera for now. A month later, I was chatting with a friend in Mexico and I've mentioned the show. She mentioned another Brazilian show she liked. This conversation was happening on whatsapp. The moment I jumped on Google, on my desktop machine, all I had to do was type 2 characters on the search bar and Google completed it with the name of the show she was talking about.

[1] http://idiallo.com/blog/context-time-travel

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#34

Post by simonster »

shostack wrote: post #31
Jemaclus wrote: post #5

The obvious reason is that your friends are searching for things. When you talk to your friends and your friend mentions that he's going through a divorce, the odds are great that he's looked up a divorce lawyer online, because you're friends, FB figures you'd be interested in the same thing and starts serving you ads for divorce attorneys. Or if your friend is renovating his house and does a search for new cabinets,…

OP updated this to specify that they saw cockroaches and immediately after saw the ads without searching at all. The coincidence is certainly odd, but not entirely out of the realm of possibility, especially if this isn't the first time they've had cockroaches (ie. they might be in a demographic/audience segment likely to have these issues and be frequently targeted). I would also add that FBX partners can leverage a…

Alternatively other people in the same building could have had roaches and somehow made FB aware of it (e.g. status updates), and FB could have targeted him based on his address.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#35

Post by xrxrxrx »

oh_sigh wrote: post #17
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.

Unfortunately we can't do fine grained permissions like that on any common smart phone OS. You'll have to either take their word for it, or decompile the app and make sure they are telling the truth.

challenge accepted

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#37

Post by azinman2 »

chm wrote: post #18

I had a similar experience. My girlfriend watches a lot of Netflix. She was listening to Gotham when she asked me to look up the name of one of the actors on IMDB. I fired up Chrome on my already opened MBP, typed IMDB in the search bar and the first result was IMDB Gotham. I'm not going to speculate, but the coincidence was indeed surprising.

Correlation is not causation.

This is the kind of stuff that convinces people of having a religious moment that "only" can be explained by their religious beliefs.

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#38

Post by harryf »

logn wrote: post #29
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…

I wonder if it's possible to capture audio through the motion detection sensors? Would a phone lying on a table be able to pick up vibrations caused by someone speaking? Does the OS provide APIs for app developers to access the information ?

Re: Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

#40

Post by Zikes »

Chinjut wrote: post #30
dang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I do feel like it removes a rather important piece of context around my posting of the quote. Whereas before it was an additional point about the sentiment of general user trust in Facebook, now it stands as an attempted jab amidst the dogpile of tinfoil hattery.
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