scarily… They don’t need to to be this creepy, but even I’m a tad baffled by this.
Yesterday me and a few friends were at a pub quiz, of course no phones allowed, so none were used.
It came down to a tie break question of my team and another. “What is the run time of the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the ring” according to IMDb.
We answered and went about our day. Today my friend from my team messaged me - top post on his “today feed” is an article published 23 hours ago…
Forgive the pointless red circle… I didnt take the screenshot.
My friend isn’t a privacy conscience person by any means, but he didnt open IMDb or google anything to do with the franchise and hasn’t for many months prior. I’m aware its most likely an incredible coincidence, but when stuff like this happens I can easily understand why many people are convinced everyone’s doom brick is listening to them…
Phones are spyware by definition
Phones abaolutely do listen, but not to audio via the mic. When Apple and Google tell you they respect your privacy, they mean they don’t harvest data directly from a live feed of the mic nor camera; they still scan your files in some cases, and they harvest your browsing history, and read your text messages metadata, and check your youtube watch history, and scan your contacts, and check your location, and harvest hundreds of other litttle tiny data points that don’t seem like much but add up to a big profile of you and your behavior and psyche.
So your friend was at a pub quiz with a couple dozen other people, and his phone knew where he was and who was nearby. A statistically significant portion of the people there were not privacy conscious and googled “Lord of the Rings runtime” or something similar. All that data got harvested by Google and Apple, and processed, and then the most recent and fitting entry from some master list of customers’ sites’ articles was pushed to all their newsfeeds.
Humans don’t understand intuitively how much information is being processed through nonverbal means at any given time, and that’s the disconnect large companies exploit when they say misleading things like “noooo, your phone isn’t listening to you.”
But it’s totally not privacy invasive, because at no point along the line did a human view your data (/s)
Phones absolutely listen. But they probably process the speech locally, unless there’s a trigger word flagged, and send mostly text.
But then it was found Google would upload the audio when a zipper sound was heard, so who knows how often your triggering spy conditions.
If you think your Apple phone isn’t listening to you, I have some seaside real estate I’d like to sell you in Montana.
Again, not my device personally
I’m an Android/Google/Pixel person. I have a Google Home speaker at work (self-employed barber/stylist) and was playing old classic country music a few weeks ago. My client mentioned that her husband’s favorite artist is Porter Wagoner and his favorite song is Cold Hard Facts Of Life. Well, guess what the very next song was? And now, ever since then, I’ve been inundated with that song. It plays constantly.
Iirc correctly maybe it wasn’t picked up on a mic but if your friends all googled it after, it’s likely their devices and accounts were already associated with you, so online services will think maybe you’d bet interested in it too.
Other folks in the area searched it, and bluetooth nearby as well as wifi tracking put them all in the same place. Same as old mate with the Spanish comment, he was hanging around in an area with folks who regularly look at stuff in Spanish.
What you think might be spontaneous isn’t.
Somehow I find this much worse.
Very valid point! Clearly people cheating!
Or just looking up the answer afterwards.
What’s scary is that tracking tech is so good they don’t even need to listen to you to know what you’ve been talking/thinking about.
Your fellow competitors did not necessarily perform the search when they were at the pub. It could be a the john when they got home. Your data profile is still tied to them right now.
I am convinced they do listen. I have had 2 instances og this. Once I was talking with my mom about some new bedsheets and covers. She later went to the store and sent me a picture to see if it’s okay. I later got an add for the exact same bedsheets and covers.
Had another similar thing when I got an add for some stuff we were just talking about with some people. Cannot remember what specifically.
wasn’t there a thing recently where it became clear they do listen?
My fairphone even SHOWED me the mic was running, in the top banner. Sure enough, google had accessed my mic that minute, clearly stated in the settings. I’ve turned it off since, but I don’t trust that. I’ll have to get around to switching to calyx.
I hadnt heard of this if so
A whistleblower from apple showed that they do listen and have whole lawyer client conversations were recorded at apple. I dont know if that was what the commenter before was hinting at.
Is this what you’re talking about? https://kkc.com/blog/apple-whistleblower-details-intimate-data-spying-profiling-in-new-interviews/
Exactly. I only read about it in combination with the court case but yes, this is the underlying situation iirc.
yes, they listen to everything
No no, they listen. How do you think the “Hey Google” feature works? It has to listen for the key phrase. Might as well just listen to everything else.
I spent some time with a friend and his mother and spoke in Spanish for about two hours while YouTube was playing music. I had Spanish ads for 2 weeks after that.
Your phone listens for the phrase “Hey Google” and uses little processing power to do so. If it was listening to everything and processing that information, your battery would die incredibly fast. We’re talking charging your phone multiple times a day even if you weren’t using it for anything else.
As someone else mentioned in another commend, being near Spanish speakers’ phones, Bluetooth/Wifi tracking are what Google is using to track you. They search Google in Spanish, Google can tell you spend time with them, Google thinks you speak Spanish.
Well shit. That makes a lot of sense.
Exactly. Phones have dedicated hardware that stores the trigger word and wakes up the OS when it detects it.
Your phone listens for the phrase “Hey Google” and uses little processing power to do so.
I need some metrics on this. It must be recording at least some things above a certain volume threshold in order to process them.
I mean the microphone is active, so it’s listening, but it’s not recording/saving/processing anything until it hears the trigger phrase.
The truth is they really don’t need to. They track you in so many other ways that actually recording you would be pointless AND risky. While most people don’t quite grasp digital privacy and Google can get away with a lot because of it, they do understand actual eavesdropping and probably wouldn’t stand all their private moments being recorded.
so it’s listening, but it’s not recording/saving/processing anything until it hears the trigger phrase.
I think this is the part I hold issue with. How can you catch the right fish, unless you’re routinely casting your fishing net?
I agree that the processing/battery cost of this process is small, but I do think that they’re not just throwing away the other fish, but putting them into specific baskets.
I hold no issue with the rest of your comment
This stuff isn’t magic. It’s tech. These things can be proved by analyzing network traffic.
It would be pretty easy to test, too.
Get a pre-paid phone. Set up a brand-new Google or Apple account. Activate phone using the new account. Put it through its paces for a few hours and note the ads you get.
Shoot the shit with your friends and family with the phone on the table for a few hours.
Put the phone through its paces again and note the ads you get.
The amount of processing power that would be needed to listen the output of billions of devices 24/7 just to push ads wouldn’t make economic sense.
AI acceleration ASICs are already in a lot of hardware these days. It doesn’t take a whole lot anymore for it to be both cheap and feasible.
Prove your extraordinary claim.
Google does listen, what do you mean? They have a feature in form of their voice assistant to make sure it can
Yes I’m aware they have the feature but as others stated, listening 24/7 would require enormous levels of compute power that even google wouldnt see as economical
If you are worried about it then do something about it there are alot of things you can do to improve your privacy. If that’s not the case then forget it
As I stated, not my phone, I dont get this stuff happen to me personally
