(I know many of you already know it but this incident I experienced made me so paranoid about using smartphones)
To start off, I’m not that deep into privacy rabbit hole but I do as much I can possibly to be private on my phone. But for the rest of phones in my family, I generally don’t care because they are not tech savvy and pushing them towards privacy would make their lives hard.
So, the other day I pirated a movie for my family and since it was on Netflix, it was a direct rip with full HD. I was explaining to my family how this looks so good as this is an direct rip off from the Netflix platform, and not a recording of a screening in a cinema hall(camrip). It was a small 2min discussion in my native language with only English words used are record, piracy and Netflix.
Later I walk off and open YouTube, and I see a 2 recommendations pop-up on my homepage, “How to record Netflix shows” & “Why can’t you screen record Netflix”. THE WHAT NOW. I felt insanely insecure as I was sure never in my life I looked this shit up and it was purely based on those words I just spoke 5min back.
I am pretty secure on my device afaik and pretty sure all the listening happened on other devices in my family. Later that day, I went and saw which all apps had microphone access, moved most of them to Ask everytime and disabled Google app which literally has all the permissions enabled.
Overall a scary and saddening experience as this might be happening to almost everyone and made me feel it the journey I took to privacy-focused, all worth it.
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First off, if you’re concerned about phone privacy, consider a custom OS for your phone that respects privacy such as GrapheneOS.
It’s easy to figure out that your device isn’t listening to a constant audio stream 24/7, since that would drain battery and send a lot of noticeable data over the network. However, it is entirely possible to listen for certain keywords as you mentioned, and send them encrypted with another seemingly legitimate packet. There’s no way to be 100% certain, but it is possible in theory without draining too much battery.
The steps you took are good, making sure that apps don’t have any permissions they don’t need. Privacy is a spectrum, so it’s not “all or nothing”. As I mentioned before, if you’re seriously concerned about mobile privacy and want a solution, you can get a custom operating system that can remove any privacy invasive elements. GrapheneOS also allows you to disable the camera and microphone system-wide (although this functionality is present on some other Android builds).
If it eases you any, a lot of these advertisements happen to be coincidence and trigger confirmation bias. It could be that those ads happened to show up by coincidence, or that advertisers managed predicted your interests, or that you got tracked by some other means while downloading the movie. The possibilities are nearly endless.
You should install Rethink and see how much garbage your phone constantly transmits and receives. And this is not even a kernel-level firewall, so who knows how much data Google actually exfiltrates…
I don’t know about a constant audio stream, nor about keywords, but I noticed that Google Keyboard sends out some data every time you type anything. It’s not even that subtle.
If anything, I love GrapheneOS for its “Network” permission toggle. It’s nice knowing that my keyboard (or any other unnecessary apps) can’t phone home.
GrapheneOS is certainly on my wishlist too, but Pixels are quite pricey. I guess Rethink is the poor man’s version. Just a per-app firewall.
Maybe Divest/Lineage could be an option instead. Although you have to choose a device wisely (and even among supported ones, some have trouble unlocking the bootloader), there is a chance you’d find a suitable cheaper one.
Personally no regrets spending $300 on a Pixel 7a but still painful to hand over this much.
That’s Google for you, mister/miss.
And how often. have you said stuff that you have not received advertising for? You will notice it when you get a positive match but not on a negative.
Data collecting companies can predict/rate your behavior for more then 20 years based. Since then. it has been perfected. They know that you are interested in those topics without having the need to waste resources on recording and analyzing every single audio stream.
I’ll second the recommendation for GrapheneOS. One of the available options I use is to keep mic, camera, and location off at all times until I need them. That simple toggle ability changes your privacy stance greatly.
Listening to audio would be the least effective and most expensive method of data collection for advertisers. It’s not happening. They already have literally over a million data points on you, there’s nothing useful for them to glean from your audio that they don’t already have ad nauseum.
You see thousands of ads and recommendations every day. You finally found one that was relevant to you. It’s not that deep.
No, they don’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4
Again, no, they don’t: https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
If you don’t trust a 4 minute YouTube video or an independent (?) study, try a Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/comment/hfhynid/
tl;dr: “Strike that, reverse it.”
They can bid all they want to put ads in front of me, I ain’t gonna see them. Of course, they probably know that, too.
I have videos that prove the opposite so like idk
If they actually prove something, I’d be happy to give them a watch. 40 minutes of some dudebro’s podcast with a phone in his hands doesn’t count
Hey, looks like you forgot to post them so we’ll ignore your comment for now until you do!
Listen, mister/miss. I tried it once and the reaction was bad because geopolitical reasons. Do I want to get banned by admin abuse? No. Do I want to start a political fight in a nice thread? Also no.
A phone can notice when it’s in the hands of a security expert and start acting normal. Before dieselgate, Volkswagen cars had been emissions tested for years without finding anything suspicious. Turned out VW used the car’s sensors to detect when it was being tested.
correct.
the level of unsubstantiated cope in this thread is mind boggling. from people many of whom should honestly know better.
I will watch these later. But recently one of the Facebook’s employee’s chat was leaked saying they listen to customer mics 24/7 via a third party. Google blocked the alleged third party and Facebook has ended ties with them too.
What about it?
It was an ad partner’s pitch deck, not much to do with Facebook itself. And it didn’t really explain how it would be listening anyway.
Besides, if they were recording, processing and / or transferring audio, that would mean there’s data usage, battery usage, etc - stuff that’s easy to prove.
The truth is a lot simpler (and scarier) and you will find that in the links I provided.
no, they don’t
Please be careful with your claims.
In my experience, whenever investigating these claims and refutations we usually find when digging past the pop media headlines into the actual academic claims, that noone has proven it’s not happening. If you know of a conclusive study, please link.
Regarding the article you have linked we don’t even need to dig past the article to the actual academic claims.
The very article you linked states quite clearly:
The researchers weren’t comfortable saying for sure that your phone isn’t secretly listening to you in part because there are some scenarios not covered by their study.
(Genuine question, not trying to be snarky) Will you take a moment to reflect on which factors may have contributed to your eagerness to misrepresent the conclusions of the studies cited in your article?
Of course a researcher is never sure something is 100% ruled out. That’s part of how academic research works.
My eagerness stems from being tired of anecdotes presented as evidence supporting a weird privacy conspiracy. This takes away from the actual issue at hand, which is your digital footprint and how your data is used.
Of course a researcher is never sure something is 100% ruled out. That’s part of how academic research works.
once again, that isn’t what they were reported to have said. [and researchers don’t need to repeat the basic precepts of the scientific method in every paper they write, so perhaps its worthwhile to note what they were reported to say about that, rather than write it off as a generic ‘noone can be 100% certain of anything’] it’s a bit rich to blame someone for lacking rigor while repeatedly misrepresenting what your own article even says.
what the article actually said is
because there are some scenarios not covered by their study
and even within the subset of scenarios they did study, the article notes various caveats of the study:
Their phones were being operated by an automated program, not by actual humans, so they might not have triggered apps the same way a flesh-and-blood user would. And the phones were in a controlled environment, not wandering the world in a way that might trigger them: For the first few months of the study the phones were near students in a lab at Northeastern University and thus surrounded by ambient conversation, but the phones made so much noise, as apps were constantly being played with on them, that they were eventually moved into a closet
there’s so much more research to be done on this topic, we’re FAR FAR from proving it conclusively (to the standards of modern science, not some mythical scientifically impossible certainty).
presenting to the public that is a proven science, when the state of research afaict has made no such claim is muddying the waters.
if you’re as absolutely correct as you claim, why misrepresent whats stated in the sources you cite?
I’ve said this elsewhere but it would be piss easy to prove. I think it’s weird that we’re talking about how something can be true because it hasn’t been disproven, but not that something can’t be true because it hasn’t been proven.
piss easy
many domain experts dedicating significant resources to it’s study
pick one.
when your sources repeatedly don’t say what you claim they say, maybe its time to revisit your claims ;)
It would be piss easy to prove your phone is always listening to you. Stop being obtuse.
always listening
i never claimed always, i specifically advised op to refrain from claiming always.
how can you pretend to represent a sound scientific approach when you misrepresent the scientific claims made in sources you cite
Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: BSMaybe I should have removed this post, because it is ridiculous.
Oh I just checked, this is a lemmy.ml community.
Exactly, it is “A community of privacy and FOSS enthusiasts, run by Lemmy’s developers,” and not a community for spreading nonsense like Google secretly listening to your conversations to better recommend YouTube videos to you.
The youtube algorithm determined the following: people who watch the kind of videos in your history, are also interested in recording netflix shows. And it was right, because you are in fact interested in that (general) topic. This is another possible explanation.
- A family member might have searched it
- An ad network might have reported on your piracy (especially now with privacy sandbox)
- Your media player might just be doing some tracking and/or insecure searching for metadata
- Siri or something might have popped open
- You googled to get to the piracy website
- You may have just looked up the movie, and the movie was popular with pirates
Don’t get too paranoid
Same thing with microwaves
Food is ready and get a video for “why do microwaves hmm?”
Don’t get things for free! Ever! The producers aren’t rich enough yet to pay the artists a living wage for their creative work. Homeland will extra-judicially use weapon systems on you even if you don’t pirate because all it takes is false accusation and then you will be tortured and never allowed to reproduce anywhere in the US sphere of influence (or TPP or UN).
Yup. I was driving in the car with a few people for work. We were talking about a music video a couple of us had worked on, and we were explaining who daddy yankee/bad bunny was, and we mentioned daddy yankee did the song “gasolina.”
We live in the US, the conversation was in English, but fuck if “estacion de gasolina” didn’t show up on our route.
No, your phone doesn’t listen to you 24/7. With that out of the way, there are a number of places where youtube may have gotten that info. One possibility is that someone in your household looked up the movie and maybe checked if stuff ripped from netflix is indeed full HD. And since everyone in your family is using the same NAT IP, then it’s easy for youtube to target recommendations at everyone in that household.
I don’t doubt you, but it’s worth asking if your reasons for stating that our phones don’t listen to us 24/7 haven’t changed since you first formed the opinion.
Lots of things are meso-facts (a true fact at rhetorical time we learn it, but no longer true later). Tech moves quickly. It’s worth not assuming anyone is right here, & asking: under what conditions could our phones be listening (enough to produce what OP experienced)?
Watchdog groups have been monitoring these services for years now and have yet to find the “your phone is listening 24/7” smoking gun.
Similarly before dieselgate, Volkswagen cars had been emissions tested for years without finding anything suspicious. Turned out VW used the car’s sensors to detect when it was being tested. A phone can notice when it’s in the hands of a security expert and start acting normal.
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But again, what I’m getting at here is, are we so sure it takes all that much anymore. Processing could take place in a shorter way now, more than it could when our current opinion was still true.
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The conditions would be that all the controls that are in place to prevent it from happening are bypassed, which no one has proven yet. For example, Apple has developed their devices (assuming not jailbroken) in such a way where the camera and microphone usage indicators are hardwired and can’t easily be bypassed by software hacks. So if your phone was listening to you all the time, then the microphone indicator light would always be on. Listening 24/7 would also drain the phone’s battery and use up so much data it would be noticeable. Another example is Siri. It is actually designed in a way where there are 2 components. The first one is local on the phone and separate from the actual Siri component. It is what’s actively listening for you to call it. Once you call it, it then activates the actual Siri that transmits your voice inputs online.
People saying it hurts battery usage, sends crazy amounts of network etc don’t seem to use the latest features from Google.
Now playing, Adaptive audio are some features of android system that Google has given in recent years which listen to our microphones all the time and serve their purpose. I have used them in the past, although it said it consumes battery, I never experienced huge battery brain. Google also says these services work on device and never leaves the device, but I assume extracting few words from my audio and sending them to their servers at frequent times wouldn’t be such a technically demanding process like everyone are stating here on this post. It entirely possible and probably happening.
Thank you, this is the kind of detail I was hoping someone would describe, no sarcasm. To be specific, too, this is all probably easier on Androids / jailbroken iPhones
Here’s a fun little experiment you can try. Make a list of random topics and have a discussion about each of them on separate days. Make sure each topic is something that could result in creepy suggestions or ads on YT. If even one of these topics produces the expected result, you could be on to something.
Fun, sure, but not an experiment that would actually be meaningful.
The data from your phone’s microphone doesn’t magically appear in Google’s advertising servers. It would have to go through a lot of steps before it gets there, and one of the first steps is in your home (if you’re on WiFi). One can analyze the traffic/data that leaves their phone.
It’s good to be cautious, but worrying about your phone’s microphone is potentially like worrying about your windows while leaving your front door open.
These kinds of things never happen to me, could it be because I have all the tracking stuff disabled?? /s
