Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.

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If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
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Our phones DO listen to our voices 24x7 (lemmy.world)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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(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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[–] [email protected] 31 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Person in a privacy community using YouTube and multiple Google accounts thinks the only way they are being tracked is through phone microphones...you can't make this shit up.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

As I have already mentioned in the post, I am not that deep into privacy rabbit hole that I am completely degoogled my life. If I did, I wouldn't have any privacy concerns to begin with ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

On why I haven't done it yet is simply because it is extremely hard. If you go full privacy-focused, you lose out on convience and vice versa. I'd like to stay in balance.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

You focused on the wrong part of my comment. The issue isn't that you have Google accounts or use YouTube, it's that you seem to have very little understanding of how much data is being collected about you through these avenues. Instead you focus on some conspiracy theory about phone microphones which is still yet to be proven despite years of technologically illiterate people telling us that "the only way they could have known that is if they were listening to me!!!!". I don't understand how you get to the point of posting in a niche privacy community whilst still being so completely clueless and misinformed.

[–] [email protected] -5 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I was in the same belief that phones do not listen to our mics for years until that news of Facebook employees leaked chat came out.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 3 weeks ago

Let's assume the incident you referred is true. It's still not the phone microphone that's doing it, it's the spyware/adware/malware app you installed from play store.

Solution? Degoogle and stay away from tech giants like meta, apple, etc. Use opens source alternatives.

If you are still paranoid, Android 13 and onwards, whenever your cam/mic is being used, you can see a green microphone or camera logo on the status bar top right.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

What are you referring to? I searched for this and the results were just the CMG story. That wasn't even proof that the technology existed, let alone was being used.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 3 weeks ago

Yes that was the story I was referring to. It doesn't really take that much technological effort to listen to your mic and send bits of data to server.