No they dont , they dont have to. Far easier to get things other ways.
Yes, but also no. You're underestimating advertisers' greed for data.
It's actually trivial nowadays to build a background service like that.
Which would show up in network traffic , which it doesnt. There is no need for it.
You could easily process the audio and filter in on the device and just send the transcribed parts that match your filters for further processing. No need to send a constant audio stream. Eventually it would show up in the battery usage but things like the google song recognition also heavily use the mic and process audio and it doesn't show up as heavy as you would expect.
Ok, real question: what exactly would show up in network traffic?
Evidence of voice collection and data transmission. Just hook it up to wireshark and test. It's been done and zero evidence produced. Not trivial to hide. Neither in traffic or battery use .
Btw independent aricle from 2008 heres something a decade fresher https://www.androidauthority.com/your-phone-is-not-listening-to-you-884028/
Why would they need to do it anyway? Far easier to just use the telemetry already there. Your phone knows more about you than you think already if you don't use privacy respecting software. No need to use the microphone. But if you know something none from the security field does, I'm all for seeing some evidence.
Nevermind the why (I'm not entirely convinced it's being done), I want to know what exactly would be seen in network traffic.
Ok, you said "voice collection" which I'll assume is audio recording and then uploading to some server. That's an astonishingly bonkers and inefficient way of doing it. You run a very small model (using something like Tflite) that's trained against a few hundred keyboards (brand names, products, or product category) and run it on the background of your service. Phones already do essentially this with assistant activation listening. Then once a few hours of listening, compress the plain text detection data (10 MB of plain text can be compressed to 1 MB) and then just upload the end result. And we wouldn't be talking about megabytes, we'd be talking single digits kilobytes. An amount that wouldn't even be a blip on wireshark, especially since phones are so exceedingly chatty nowadays. Have you actually tried to wireshark phone traffic? It's just constant noise.
It's entirely possible to do. But that doesn't mean that it is being done.
It would cost trillions and half the battery life. Just because you dont understand something doesnt make you right. Your entire argument is shattered in the link I provided you earlier. Its not a few kb needed and if done locally a huge battery eater. Not to mention that the cost to have any use of it would exceed the entire value of the admarket.
there are plenty of people that can find shit in the noise on wireshark if there was anything like what you are suggesting.
Also there is a teapot in orbit around jupiter. Prove me wrong.
Just because you dont understand
Lol. My dude, I'm a developer who specializes in AI.
It would cost trillions
I have no clue how you came to that number. I could (and partially have) whipped up a prototype in a few days.
half the battery life
Hardly. Does Google assistant half battery life? No, so why would this? Besides, you would just need to listen to the mic and record audio only if the sound is above a certain volume threshold. Then once every few hours batch process the audio. Then send the resulting text data (in the KBs) up to a server.
The average ad data that's downloaded for in-app display is orders of magnitude larger than what would be uploaded.
there are plenty of people that can find shit in the noise on wireshark
How are they going to see data that's encrypted and bundled with other innocuous data?
Litarally all your questions are answered in the link i pointed out twice now. Try it. Hey google doesnt take much 1k wake words a lot more.. your math doesnt add up anywhere close to reality.
is this still a surprise to anyone here?
Anyone whos said anything outloud and then immediately got an ad should know by now that it isnt some conspiracy, its easily testable by not searching something and just talking about it while having an app open, the more obvious one they track is dms, if I dm someone something (text based not posts) ill get ads or posts related to it.
Im assuming they target your wifi too, because my ads change to reflect what I do on other devices too (always noticable as a hobby hopper)
Not helpful
Beer pong
Yeah that sounds like an app user who would be okay with his audio being recorded...
An app where all you end up recording is "Bro! Bro! Bro! Broseeeeph! Let's gooooooo, Bro!"
How can they tell I'm popping?.... Oh....what if I stopped flushing? So is that why some people don't flush? They're trying to be stealthy!
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
