Exactly my reaction. Most of the claims about "OMG, the phone was listening!" are bullshit. But... uh... apparently not all of them. - ThreadSky

mmasnick.bsky.social • 54 days ago

Exactly my reaction. Most of the claims about "OMG, the phone was listening!" are bullshit. But... uh... apparently not all of them.

Reposted from parker higgins

I think probably 95% of speculation that your phone is secretly listening to you is overblown, but man the tech industry really does not do itself any favors with that 5% arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Comments

oreganojones.bsky.social•54 days ago

On this topic, I've always had the thought that "Meta is not listening to your phone" is not the same as "Meta is not buying data from someone else who is listening to your phone".

meritcandour.bsky.social•54 days ago

If you happen to have a phone connected to the account of a
person who works for Verizon,
or if you indeed, do work for
Verizon, the phone is listening.
This has been
experienced by credible people on numerous occasions.

joeyclose.bsky.social•54 days ago

My devices specifically built to understand what I'm saying cannot understand me, and I honestly cannot get a decent product recommendation no matter how much data I give them. So the idea my phone could overhear me and suggest an ad that's accurate enough I'd notice is wild.

itzspelledgeoff.bsky.social•54 days ago

If my phone was listening to me there’d be a line of mental health professionals at my door a mile deep.

lilianedwards.bsky.social•54 days ago

They are mad not to fight this one to the end. I have spent 10 years denying this was happening to 100% friends & family and now.. every mad conspiracy theory is presumptively correct?

eric.mammut.ericmitch.com.ap.brid.gy•54 days ago

@mmasnick.bsky.social apparently people allow access for your phone to snoop on you all the time https://www.newsweek.com/phone-voice-assistants-active-listening-consent-targeted-ads-1949251

balthazarspeedboat.bsky.social•53 days ago

https://bsky.app/profile/rahaeli.bsky.social/post/3lesd6cxyw222

mmasnick.bsky.social•53 days ago

Yeah. I don't buy the advertising claims. I'm just saying shit like this is why people believe they're true, even when they're mostly bullshit.

oggie.bsky.social•53 days ago

I am reasonably confident that my phone is not recording every word I say and using that to target ads at me. But if they changed their minds, what is actually stopping it? Goodwill from corporations?

I know lots of stuff is doing similar (ACT on TVs, roomba cams). We really need privacy laws.

jimjimerson.bsky.social•53 days ago

Storage space.

parkrrrr.bsky.social•53 days ago

And bandwidth. People with limited data plans would notice it fairly quickly.

rahaeli.bsky.social•53 days ago

I mean, people also believe vaccines cause autism.

2001dalmatians.bsky.social•53 days ago

With so many researchers on the spectrum it may be the other way around. Maybe autism causes vaccines.

rahaeli.bsky.social•53 days ago

I like it!

2001dalmatians.bsky.social•50 days ago

Not original with me of course. A meme and a t shirt and an SMBC strip did it first.

advaith.bsky.social•54 days ago

I mean, everyone knows about the hey Siri feature and it asks you if you want it on or not... obviously it's "listening" to enable that but I don't see why that would be an issue

jamielove.bsky.social•54 days ago

I think firms trying to get training data has made things worse .

leesarenae.bsky.social•54 days ago

There is no way I was getting ads for orange juice unless my phone was listening so I must be one of the legit 5%. I have a google phone.

008zulu.bsky.social•54 days ago

$20 huh? Paint the town red.

drewc.bsky.social•54 days ago

This one is, though.

jacf-part2.bsky.social•54 days ago

I had a work tearoom discussion about a local business that was shutting down and they were selling off equipment. The business name wasn't mentioned but about an hour later I started getting auction listing ads for the equipment they were selling. Too specific for comfort!

jacf-part2.bsky.social•54 days ago

Having said that, I don't spend my days worrying that my Samsung phone is stalking me. It gets enough data on me from my purposeful use, it doesn't need to listen to me for more info!

elderofancients.bsky.social•54 days ago

"Listening" versus "Detecting audio". A microphone is always detecting audio because of how it works, as long as it has power. And it'll always have power unless otherwise designed so. Which it might be.
If it's not too expensive.
But hey, easier to just not read the telemetry from the microphone!

elderofancients.bsky.social•54 days ago

We can totally trust the programmers to not make an error in the RBAC of the sensor OS API!

unchi.org•53 days ago

Mobile engineers are strongly incentivized to optimize for power consumption at all times — battery life is one of the most critical issues for mobile devices. Manufacturers have a strong incentive not to record or transmit audio that isn’t absolutely necessary.

elderofancients.bsky.social•52 days ago

Good point. Yet doesn't mean 3rd parties can't enter the mix.

orpach.bsky.social•52 days ago

There is pretty robust audio detection built into pretty much every currently supported iphone.
Check under accessibility settings for it.

Does things like pop a notification if it hears dogs barking, water running, traffic noise, etc...
In my limited testing, that's happening on-device.

uncle6.org•54 days ago

I still haven't seen the connect the dots from "accidental recording" to "targeted advertising" in this case and they did themselves no favors by settling. I am sure they used the data for their own nefarious ends but I cannot see a mechanism for sharing it out without blowing up their spot

uncle6.org•54 days ago

improper recording yes, possible internal use of that data sure, but "Siri recordings = targeted third party ads" seems like a post hoc ergo proper hoc fallacy unless someone can show the API or the sales mechanism. But because they settled, it will be taken as fact

thatac.bsky.social•54 days ago

That in which one wonders if one of the hundreds of teams of hackers crawling over the code looking for ways to attack it noticed these recordings happening.
Selling a way to tap into something that wasn't supposed to be happening would fund a whole buncha research.

But I'm crazy.

crasianamerican.bsky.social•53 days ago

*Unintentionally. Coughfuckingliescough

laryatflint.bsky.social•54 days ago

There's listening and then there's listening ;)

https://youtu.be/NI-wxN6Gnc0?si=FFGfQBjsysLVWT0k

darkwebmallcop.bsky.social•54 days ago

This used to happen to me and I had Siri disabled which made me particularly susceptible to some of the more technical explanations for it. Now I’m leaning toward you can’t really disable Siri.

suasponte2023.bsky.social•54 days ago

If there is no way to physically turn off a microphone, it's best to assume someone is listening and only say things around the mic that could be comfortably said in front of a stranger. YMMV

elderofancients.bsky.social•54 days ago

This boss gets it!

rosspruden.com•54 days ago

We are all Apple users, and that’s 10 years of purchases of laptops, desktops, watches, iPads, HomePods… we could be owed a princely sum.

docslacker.bsky.social•53 days ago

Not it isn’t it’s for a limited number of devices.

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