Technology

I'll tell you my story, believe it or not.

I had a Samsung phone. got sick and tired of getting not just targeted advertising about shit I had spoken about, buy also targeted emails as well. really freaky shit.

I switched phones. got a fairphone with e/os.

it's been about 2 years now. my old Samsung is a phone I use strictly for work. it only exists inside my office and is never taken outside of the room.

ALL my ads and emails are about work related topics now.

I could talk about stuffing cheetos up my rectum outside my office and never see an ad for chester cheetah. as soon as I say anything about it in the office, boom!

Sure, Google, or Amazon, or Facebook may not be listening to you...but that doesn't mean ~~Samsung~~ someone isn't listening and selling them that information.

It's well possible and previously tv mic had been used as bugging device. The problem is, way too many security researchers look in system level software of iOS and even other components of the device that such practice will be too risky for apple (same applies for mainstream android products). Also processing realtime audio, finding potentially unrealiable topic from it and doing realtime ad is actually too much work as of today's tech (might change sooner than you think though).

What, I think, is more practical is to use the whole query after the wake word to show ad, and potentially use other app tracking data, which is way much reliable than voice for targeting purpose. Voice data is useful for bugging purpose, primarily (ab)used by nation states and LE.

I bet in the medical procedure case mentioned in the blog the user searched/talked about that in other apps and average people aren't good to notice these privacy leaks.

People always talk about getting served ads after they talk about something. I think it's the other way around. The ads put the thought into your brain and then you start talking about it and notice after you've already been thinking about it for a while.

I'm not saying it's completely 100% not possible and has never happened in the history of human technology, but the situation is not as ubiquitous as most people seem to think it is.

Don't get me wrong, collecting and inferring personal information is happening on an epic and ubiquitous scale these days, but for the most part, it's not the microphones on your devices that are doing the data collection.

Pretty much all my older relatives are completely convinced their phones are listening to their day to day conversations and serving up ads based on those conversations. One of them came to visit me for a week over the summer. One night we had been talking about having asparagus for dinner, and as evidence that their phone was listening to us, the next day they showed me that their news feed was filled with asparagus recipes. Another night, we were talking about one of their medical conditions and the drugs they were taking, and the next day they showed me that they got notifications about a prescription drug for that condition. On another day, we had been talking about a specific actor's filmography and all their movies that we liked, the next day their streaming video app was suggesting a bunch of content from that actor.

I can understand why this seemed pretty convincing that our phones were listening to us, but consider the simpler explanation.

I live in a rural area where there's not good cellular reception, so for the most part, our phones are connected via wifi to the same internet connection. Essentially, every device on the property has the same external IP address. So, when I looked up asparagus recipes on my laptop later that night because I wanted to surprise my relative with that specific dish, and when I Googled the prescription medication the relative was taking to see what the side effects where, and when I looked up that actor on IMBD to see what all movies they'd been in, that pretty much gave all the advertisers all the information they needed to start targeting ads and recommendations to folks sharing the same IP address.

Occam's Razor being what it is, I assume that's how things went down versus all our conversations being constantly recorded and uploaded to the net to be interpreted and used for the purposes of serving ads.

Instagram showed me an ad for a medical condition I only discussed out loud, in person, in my doctors office.

Instagram was immediately uninstalled that day.

I don't think that most of the big tech companies are listening to your microphone (I'm not ruling it out entirely, and I'm certainly there are some smaller sketchier companies that are doing it)

But I think most of the time most of the time they don't need to

They know what ads you've seen on your phone/computer, what you've been googling, the websites you've visited, where you've used your credit card, what shows and movies you watch, and where you've been (from gps locations, or from what wifi networks and Bluetooth devices you've been near or connected to) and what ads, playlists, stores, products, etc. you were exposed to while you were there, and of course who you talk to and all of that same information about those people.

That's all going to influence the things you think and talk about, they probably have a pretty good idea what kind of conversations you're going to have well before you do.

And don't get me wrong, that's creepy as fuck.

I think most of it comes down to people not even realizing how much data about ourselves we put out there and all of the ways it can be collected and used to build a profile about you.

And honestly I think they can probably get better data from that most of the time than from trying to filter out background noise and make sense of what you're talking about through your microphone.

ITT:

People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they wouldn’t use the most obvious one?”

vs.

People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they would need to use the most expensive one?”

Believe it, don't believe it, some people believe the earth is flat, and 5G gives you cancer

404 Media previously reported Cox Media Group (CMG) was advertising a service that claimed to target ads based on what potential customers said near device microphones. Now, here is the pitch deck CMG sent to prospective companies. Google has kicked CMG off its Partner Program in response.