[limbero]

This article reminds me of this excellent tongue-in-cheek piece of writing by Jonathan Zeller in McSweeney's:

Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World

https://www.mcsweeneys.net/articles/calm-down-your-phone-isn...

[Spooky23]

There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared with various entities it makes me more suspicious.

Just like Facebook’s “we never sell your data (we just stalk you and sell ads using your data)”. I’m sure there’s a similar weasel excuse… “we never listen to your audio (but we do analyze it to improve quality assurance)”

[LgWoodenBadger]

It’s similar with the TSA facial recognition photos. “We delete your photo immediately” but what they don’t say is that they don’t delete the biometrics from that photo.

[alpaca128]

> There is so much time spent “debunking” audio recordings being shared

Not really. 99% of the time it's someone claiming that it happens.

And it's always an anecdote, never clear proof that it happened. Let alone that it happened because of the audio and not web activity. And that the conversation was actually the cause for the ad and not the other way around.

Is it technically possible? Sure. But if so many people are so certain that it definitely happens, why didn't dozens of people already prove it with a fresh Google/Apple account and phone?

[jsbisviewtiful]

Not saying this is true, but the amount of time and effort put into saying "no one is listening to you" could be attributed to the novel 1984, where the government is actively listening to its citizens. Enough people could associate the novel with government surveillance that it's what people interpret as the most likely surveillance happening - and enough people don't understand tech that it's lost on them that a) the tech to actively listen to millions of people constantly doesn't exist at the appropriate level to be effective b) there are significantly more and far more effective ways to monitor people with current tech than via microphone. It's truly unfortunate people don't understand tech to realize what's actually possible and what is actively happening vs what they imagine could be happening

[gosub100]

We don't "listen" to your audio, the microphone does, and your phone transcribes it to text on your device. You cannot listen to text. Therefore we don't listen to your phone audio.

[caminanteblanco]

Except for the fact that if you read the debunkings, they go into great detail as to why that is empirically not the case.

[dangus]

There is a small list of reasons why it needs to be "debunked:"

1. Your phone is gathering data that you don't realize that it gathers.

One of the biggest examples of this is real-time location data that is brokered by cellular carriers and sold as aggregated marketing data. You don't have to give your apps permission to do anything like that because your cellular carrier can get that data regardless of your phone's OS.

2. Your phone is gathering data that you gave it permission to gather, perhaps gathering it in a way you didn't think it would do.

For example, let's say you give an app permission to read your entire photo library so that you can upload a photo. But since you gave it that permission on the OS level, it might be uploading more images than you explicitly select. Another example used to be clipboard data before the OSes asked permission for use of the clipboard. One last example is text that you enter but do not submit.

Another big aspect of this is that people don't realize how these ad networks work in real time. It's not a slow thing for an advertising company to learn something about you and react accordingly, it can happen in a few short seconds.

2. The average person doesn't have any comprehension of how easy it is for data science practices to uncover information about you based on metadata that seems benign or that you don't know exists.

Most people don't understand how your behavior in an app can be used to tell the company things you like and dislike. The TikTok algorithm is a great example, it can tell what you like just by extremely subtle inputs, how you swipe, how long you watch the video. A lot of people don't realize how many things about them aren't particularly unique and how many preferences can be tied to a really specific persona that you fall into.

A real world example of all of this put together is that I was spending a lot of time browsing appliances because I just bought one, and I went to physically visit a friend. We were talking about my new appliance, and later they got ads for that specific appliance. So, the person's reaction would naturally be "it was listening to us!!" but in reality, it is more likely that our cellular carrier or carriers knew we were physically in the same place and reported that piece of information to some kind of data broker. Consider how there are a limited amount of cellular carriers, that location data may not have needed to even exit the cellular carrier to sell this data to someone. I.e., if we both have the same cellular carrier , our company already has that information and it isn't selling it to another company, it's perhaps just telling a data broker that Person A and Person B interact with each other.

Just note that I'm not claiming this is exactly how it all works as I'm not in that industry, but the general ideas here apply. The general takeaway is that literally recording audio with a microphone just isn't necessary to derive hyper-specific things about people.

[kurthr]

I can just say that I knew an entrepreneur in early post Y2K who developed apps to track music played in clubs in SF for folks like ASCAP, BMI, and SESAC. They gave out "free" phones (these were the small expensive candybars and nice flip/slideups) to the influencers of the day. They compressed the audio for orthogonality, and had a huge number of hashes to match. If they got more than a few consecutive matching hashes at a location that wasn't paying royalties, they got an enforcement call.

So the idea that it takes a huge amount of computing resources, battery life, permissions, or bandwidth to do matching of keywords is hilarious. That's what "siri", "hey google", "alexa" etc are all doing 24 hours a day. Just add another hundred and report them once an hour. You don't need low latency. It's just another tool in the bag!

Of course the cat food example is bad, because if they weren't looking for that you wouldn't get a response. Who would be willing to pay big for clicks on cat food. Now bariatric surgery? DUI? HELOC? Those pay.

[Paddywack]

Reminds me of something that a Telco exec once said in jest - “A bank can track which hotel you stayed at last night, the Telco knows who you slept with”

[hammock]

The article omits a real, serious source of microphone data though: your smart TV. I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that my TV (a Toshiba Fire TV, although I’m sure many do it) is listening to every conversation I have within earshot, even when I am not using the voice remote, and selling it to ad networks.

And of course it is also doing screen recognition (the kind of stuff OP article mentions), but that is not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about microphone data picking up live conversation from people in the room.

[api]

I am suspicious of all “smart” devices, much more so than phones because phones have a lot more scrutiny on them.

If your smart toaster, light bulb, or fridge was listening to you, would anyone even notice? Does anyone examine these devices in depth?

[shermantanktop]

Beyond a shadow of a doubt? Can you describe what you’ve experienced?

[userbinator]

Who would even want a microphone in a TV?

It's like that old Soviet Russia joke, except it's not a joke.

[walterbell]

Privacy-seeking users have physically removed microphones from phones. This should also be possible with laptops and televisions.

If Toshiba Fire TV is related to Amazon Fire TV, then it may include Alexa for voice recognition, which could be optionally disabled. In theory, Alexa is only activated after on-device recognition of the configured wake word.

[afiori]

Another source of audio data is the accelerometer, which often has laxer permissions