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More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

arstechnica.com

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Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#91

Post by pjmlp »

izacus wrote: post #34
cwyers wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 2/3rds of Android phones that have accessed the Google Play store in the week leading up to May 2nd are not on Android 6 or later: https://developer.android.com/about/dashboards/index.html

I'm not sure what you're comment is trying to say - TARGETING a new API doesn't meant you don't SUPPORT an older API. It just determines backwards compatiblity behaviour. We currently release a product that supports Android 4.1 while targeting Android 7.1. Also this dashboard is hugely misleading for the HN audience - in western audiences (USA, Canada, EU, etc. - countries HN users are from) we're tracking ~10% devic…

Here in Germany all low budget phones are still 4.x, which are what everyone on pre-paid mostly buys.

Same applies to the southern countries, which I visit regularly.

Most people on 6.0+ are on contracts, which are the minority, even though many of them might be using your app.

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#92

Post by pjmlp »

izacus wrote: post #39
cwyers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it's trying to say is that this can be a big problem even if it doesn't affect Android 6 and up. Your own statistics say it can affect up to 45% of Android users.

I completely agree. The Android upgrade situation is a huge and rather well known issue.

Not to Google, as they don't care.

Now with Android N reaching 7%,one year later, who do they think will even bother with Android O?

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#93

Post by thaumasiotes »

joshvm wrote: post #85
amelius wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know but I would say that if the ear does not pick up the energy above 20khz, then it cannot be harmed either.

Your eyes are also unable to see infrared, or ultra-violet, yet either with sufficient power will blind you. In fact it's often much more dangerous than visible light, because the light won't trigger your blink reflex. Sound is just vibration in the air, and if the pressure is high enough, you're going to suffer. High frequency ultrasound is used for various medical treatments, most of which involve localised killing…

>> I would say that if the ear does not pick up the energy above 20khz, then it cannot be harmed either.

> Your eyes are also unable to see infrared, or ultra-violet, yet either with sufficient power will blind you.

Sufficient power delivered by IR radiation can easily set you on fire, regardless of whether the part of you that's burning was sensitive to light or not. And UV can do much nastier things.

But it's hard for them to have any effect without depositing energy. It's absolutely correct that if an ear, or anything else, doesn't pick up energy from whatever you're throwing at it, it cannot be harmed.

Why worry about hearing specifically as a target for ultrasonic damage? As you yourself point out, sound can deposit energy regardless of the particular physical structure it's hitting. Delivering enough IR to the ear will destroy your hearing, but not because of any property of your hearing or your ears. Is there reason to believe that ears or hearing are more sensitive to ultrasound than, say, your nose is?

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#94

Post by elFarto »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #53
blurbleblurble wrote: post #42

I've become totally superstitious (convinced, even) that phones are listening to more than just ultrasound. There have been too many uncanny situations where youtube or google have recommended results that were far too specific to the conversation happening moments before. For example, one time I was telling my girlfriend about fourier transformations, something she'd never heard of before. She typed "Fo" into her ph…

No common friends, but college girlfriend recommended as potential friend on Facebook is my creepiest data mining moment ever.

I've had this with someone who I emailed (completely separate from Facebook) being recommended to me. The only logical conclusion I could come to is that Facebook was mining their emails for contacts.

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#95

Post by pjmlp »

on_and_off wrote: post #71
cwyers wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What it's trying to say is that this can be a big problem even if it doesn't affect Android 6 and up. Your own statistics say it can affect up to 45% of Android users.

The landscape of people who actually download apps is very different though. And he has a point : Google could easily ask that all new apps target the last version of the OS.

Just as they could "nicely" require OEMs to get their game straight.

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#96

Post by digi_owl »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #35
rubatuga wrote: post #11

Why does android trust developers so much? Just lock down the apps already, and make microphone usage obvious.

The real question is why does Android along with most other operating systems distrust the user so much. If the user were regarded as important facilities would be provided to enable the user to control the applications.

Because as one FOSS dev put it to me once, "users are dumb".

This after he had witnessed the results of a usability test on one of the big name desktop environments...

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#97

Post by nine_k »

overcyn wrote: post #31
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd go even further and light the notification LED the entire time something is reading the camera/mic from the firmware (such that applications can't disable it via software). The indicator works well for the webcams on most laptops.

So it would always be on if you use OK Google?

This is exactly the idea. Be aware that you're being listened to.

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#98

Post by legolas2412 »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #53
blurbleblurble wrote: post #42

I've become totally superstitious (convinced, even) that phones are listening to more than just ultrasound. There have been too many uncanny situations where youtube or google have recommended results that were far too specific to the conversation happening moments before. For example, one time I was telling my girlfriend about fourier transformations, something she'd never heard of before. She typed "Fo" into her ph…

No common friends, but college girlfriend recommended as potential friend on Facebook is my creepiest data mining moment ever.

She might have been stalking you..

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#99

Post by craftkiller »

IanCal wrote: post #90
blurbleblurble wrote: post #42

I've become totally superstitious (convinced, even) that phones are listening to more than just ultrasound. There have been too many uncanny situations where youtube or google have recommended results that were far too specific to the conversation happening moments before. For example, one time I was telling my girlfriend about fourier transformations, something she'd never heard of before. She typed "Fo" into her ph…

These are like modern day ghost stories. Do you really think they're running constant speech recognition on all phones, apparently unnoticed so far, just to recommend YouTube videos?

I agree that we should remain skeptical, however, one important distinction between this and ghost stories is this is already fully technically possible. All that's needed is the will, the raw processing power, and the battery life to support it. No one could ever create a proof of concept for ghosts.

Re: More Android phones than ever are covertly listening for inaudible sounds in ads

#100

Post by on_and_off »

pjmlp wrote: post #92
izacus wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely agree. The Android upgrade situation is a huge and rather well known issue.

Not to Google, as they don't care. Now with Android N reaching 7%,one year later, who do they think will even bother with Android O?

I work on a large Android app and we do bother with Android O.

As soon as the sdk will be final we will think about compiling against it and targeting it.

We are not in a huge hurry, it can skip a release or 2 (we release every 3 weeks). There are no big breaking changes though (unlike let's say Marshmallow) so as long as the support lib is stable (it needs to match with compile version) we are going to support it ASAP.

We also have some N features like shortcuts.

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