Article is from 2018. Someone must have pasted the url from hacker news where the same story was dug up recently.
Is that to say that it's no longer valid? Or just that it's old news? The list of apps associated with the software is still pretty extensive; Google Assistant even showed up.
7 years is a long time in tech.
Google Assistant is supposed to listen for the "Hey Google" trigger word. How else do you expect to use your device hand-free.
No, 2018 wasn't 7 years ago... No... Wait please..! :'(
Old news. It was old news in 2018
ok thanks, but where's the list of these apps?
These type of articles never list the apps they're discussing.
iOS and Android. If you have one of those people are listening.
Comments like this try to make you give up on privacy by making it look like all is lost from the get to.
They are lying, don't believe them, there is a lot you can do to protect your privacy.
Both of these apps have device-level notifications to let you know when an app is listening. I promise they're not. There was a service a while back that was claiming this in their advertising and it went public and their partners all scattered like flies. No one wants to be associated with that sort of thing. It's unnecessary anyway.
I used to work for a mobile advertiser, and we installed hella bloatware on phones.
This idea was floated a couple times but was deemed not very effective cause you'd have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn't tell us much more than just having a week or so of GPS data, your Facebook profile, and your phone IMEI.
It's pretty easy to see if you're near a Popeyes and what other IMEIs are connecting to the same tower, extrapolate that to you being near your wife and you and your wife thinking about shit on the Popeyes menu.
Boom targeted ad/video for fried chicken.
The rest is general tech paranoia leading to Apophenia.
There's no microphones or cameras, it's just the already gigantic mountain of data anyone who uses a smartphone is constantly broadcasting getting ground through the big data machine that has been the pillar of all tech since the last recession.
you'd have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn't tell us much
I mean that could be solved as simply as a local transcription service...
And do what? Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text. That's something even the new fancy LLMs struggle with.
Unnecessary when there's way better targeted models trained on years of data that people willingly send as part of everyday smartphone use.
Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Among other things, sure. More simply, keyword analysis.
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text.
All of these "models" are useless garbage but it doesn't stop them from trying to absolutely cram them everywhere they can.
Unnecessary
None of what they do is "necessary". They could just ask you what your relevant interests are and you could tell them, but they do it anyway. They go to great lengths for any seemingly insignificant amount of data they can get their hands on.
But… they can't access the microphone without the user explicitly allowing
Tell that to Facebook. Shit, I'll talk about something with my wife and see ads about it ten minutes later. Been happening for years.
I tested this with my Facebook app in 2013. Found a Spanish radio station, set my phone down next to it overnight, and for several weeks I was seeing ads exclusively in Spanish. Deleted the app the first day I saw them in Spanish, and deleted my account not long after that.
My wife still uses them after 5 years together and me pointing out all the times it's obviously eavesdropping on us, and she's even been creeped out by it before. Still uses it...
Unless my microphone and camera have physical switches, I will assume they are being used. Those little "your camera and microphone are off" icons in the corner of the screen don't reassure me.
This has been tested and proven time and time again. Google and Apple give apps a method to access the mic that the OS can allow or deny. This is what the apps are supposed to use.
Facebook doesn’t use that method for passive monitoring, only for active engagement. Don’t looks like it’s working when you go the use the thing and it’s disabled but it’s still listening to you.
If you must use such a social network, never ever ever use the mobile app. Use the website or don’t use the service at all.
It's more likely that your wife or someone nearby was further researching the same topic you were talking about.
Facebook and other ad companies use your location, relationships, and other data they already had on you to serve you relevant ads.
At this stage, they know more about you than the government, or your wife.
I’ve read about this phenomenon in the past. Generally it’s found that due to audio processing cost and the sheer amount of other data easily gathered, there’s no reason for them to snoop with your microphone because other data is so readily available, much easier to process, store and ship.
That's monitoring you and your closests' other behavior, as well as monitoring then nudging you towards wanting certain things. The ad itself is the last nudge in that chain that tries to go "you wanted this, don't you?" after all of the other thinking it's making a case for your life being better with it.
Only on iOS. Also a lot of apps can present valid uses for microphone access, which prompts users to allow unlimited malicious use
I can be absolutely certain no apps can access my mic in the background. Even when in the foreground, there is a hot-mic indicator.
Here's the misleading part:
Tap on one of those "while in use" apps. You'll see there is no option "allowed all the time." It doesn't exist.
"while in use" is top level, and changes to "while using the app" when you actually look at the permission. They really mean when the app is running. And many often run in the background.
Not only on iOS. I use Android and my microphone is always off unless I allow a specific app to use it, and even then, I have the option of only allowing it for that one time. Including the phone app.
Mic and camera are always off.
I thought Android has a non bypassable green dot in the notification bar when the micro is on ?
Users need to know what this dot means, and some like children or the elderly will likely not understand the ramifications
I feel like you're missing the point. Showing a green dot still doesn't solve the problem or make it ok, especially when this technology works in the background and can capture sound even while the device is in your pocket, like the article says.
I don't think we should have to be on the lookout for a little dot showing up on the screen constantly. It shouldn't even ask for microphone access unless it's absolutely essential for the app's main purpose. "Features" like this should always be off by default and buried deep in the settings. If people really wanted it (they don't), they'd go in and turn it on themselves.
You're absolutely right but that wasn't my point. I thought that if one of my installed app was doing this, at some point I'd have seen it without even being on the lookout.
Instagram at least listens thru your mic, for sure. At least on my wife’s phone, she gets targeted ads based on conversations we have in the car with no music playing
I keep my phone in a chip bag and only pull it out to LARP the preparation for the assassination Franz Ferdinand in general terms without naming actual places or names.
On the other hand, it's amazingly easy for advertisers to figure out what topics / products you're talking about without the need for constantly recording via your microphone. In most instances, it doesn't even really make sense to constantly record audio via the mic to monitor folks, other means are much more cost efficient while being just as effective. That's not to say that some app isn't or hasn't done it, just that historically speaking, it hasn't been as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think or imply.
Sometimes with these things, you have to apply Occam's Razor.
I stayed with some family during the holidays a few years ago and they are conspiracy theory fanatics unfortunately. The type that swear their phones are listening to everything they say. They get ads for things they've only ever talked about in person. That sort of thing.
As proof, they pointed out how the prior night the topic of old timey candy from our childhoods came up and all of a sudden they were getting news stories and facebook ads about those liquid filled wax bottle candies. To them, the only plausible explanation is that our phones were listening to us.
Except, as I pointed out, I specifically looked those wax bottle candies up later that night because I was curious if they were still for sale. They live way out in the country and there's limited cellular data, so basically everybody there that night was using the same wifi connection. Which means, our internet activity is all linked because to the outside world, we're all on the same network/IP address. Even more curious, though, nobody got ads for any of the other candy that we talked about and which I didn't specifically look up. So, if our phones were actually recording us and serving up ads based on the things we talked about, then why didn't we get ads for Blackjack gum, wax lips, and Brach's? Only the very specific one I happened to search for.
This is what a lot of people don't get. Plus often people see an ad or content and forget. Later they bring it up without realizing the thing is trending. It's all self feeding.
Right around the confinement my sister and I were talking about getting some seeds for my mom. Neither of us searched for seeds. From that point we both started to get ads for seeds, many for the ones we had talked about in particular. This thing was so unequivocal that it proved to me that our phones listen. Maybe they don't analyze, but they definitely listen for words actionable for an advertising purposes.
That's why i always forbid access to my microphones by apps. Many AI apps will also remember what you discussed long ago.
Go ahead, make TVs more smart. We literally removed our TV thus weekend. If you want me to upgrade it, please removed the spyware.
My tvs are connected to an SSID that can’t hit the internet. I blocked them before but my dumb ass neighbor left their WiFi unprotected and my tvs just connected to them because it couldn’t get out the internet on my network. So I created an SSID logged them in and blocked it from the internet. It doesn’t bounce to open WiFi anymore. If I block it completely from the network the WiFi just disconnects from the network because it can’t hit anything. I have LG’s.
The fact that they just desperately jump on any network is absurd. Its acting like malware.
That is an insane thing to have to do. Having to manipulate your TV into not doing something you don't want or require it to do.
Why is it even legal for it to just hop open networks automatically? Sure, if you leave your wifi unsecured you're dumb and anyone can access it, but it's still not a network you have permission to access
Good thing everyone diligently reads the T&A of Pool 3d before using it. You are reading every line of text before you hit agree, and then uninstall, right?
This might just push my fear of targeted ads enough to give in to my idea of a nearly soundproof box for my phone when I'm not using it. :(
me to my phone right now
yeah, alphonso appeared on my mibox, eset called it a trojan right after the update. had to delete it through adb, cause its a "system app"
is this still a surprise to anyone here?
Yes.
Not to you or me, but there are tons of people, even here, that are absolutely incredulous towards the idea that its possible.
I remember a bunch of people freaking out about this a few years ago and an equal number telling them they were paranoid.
You can talk about stuff and your phone will just magically start suggesting related items. Why would anyone be surprised the monitoring device in their pocket is monitoring them?
No they dont , they dont have to. Far easier to get things other ways.
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
