cm0002How much proof is there that smart tvs and phones listen to you?
Lots of videos of people doing experiments with their phones.
Is my phone listening to me? We tested it, here’s what happened
So, Turns Out Your Phone IS Listening To
Is my phone listening to me? We tested it, here's what happened
What do they conclude?
Just watched the first video. It’s 6 years old but the evidence presented seemed undoubtedly like Instagram and FB were listening to conversations and aggregating the info together with geolocation and surfing behaviour. The insta CEO tried to deflect it with insinuating that the user must have searched for specific keywords previously but the journalists specifically tested it with words in conversations they never exposed their phones to before. 20 mins later they got AD’s on insta.
I scoped this out once a while ago, and using wake word style matching to a table of keywords can be done with low power and low network egress.
I just don’t think all these companies can be accessing your mic without Apple noticing something.
But then everyone has smart devices around, and they can look at what people in your network searched and who you’re in proximity to. Which is all actually worse than audio snooping in my opinion.
Don’t know about Apple. My impression is that they take privacy pretty serious. Android though has since a few version ago a green dot in the notification area that indicates when the microphone is active. Also you can set the apps to always ask the user if they want grant the permission for microphone recording. There are also buttons to deactivate the microphone and camera completely.
So yeah it’s easier then ever with current Android versions to not be spied on if the user invests 5 mins to set the microphone and camera permissions of all apps to always ask when used. Like you said other spying IOT devices and data retention (at least for traffic data) at the provider level pose a much greater risk for surveillance.
Nate CoxDon’t know about Apple. My impression is that they take privacy pretty serious.
They do not, but they are excellent at convincing people that they do. They put on a hell of a show and say the right things and publicly advertise their marketing kill switch, but under the hood they’re doing all the same things themselves generally.
Not to say they’re not better than others, because the bar is waaaaay down there.