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.

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How much proof is there that smart tvs and phones listen to you? (sh.itjust.works)

submitted 3 days ago by bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Like, we all know they're listening , but can we provide proof?

My friend was complaining about all the new super surveillance that will be government required in cars after 2027, and I said to him dude you have a stock android, you use every AI slop feature, you use a smart TV on your unsecured network, and uses x every day. They have everything they could possibly need on him. Oh and he posts questionable things to fb daily under his real name.

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[–] 9point6@lemmy.world 22 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

It's still never been proven despite countless very smart people looking for this exact behaviour for well over a decade now. The first person to actually prove this whole mass spying via microphone to sell ads thing is actually happening, would be world-famous overnight.

For instance on an android phone, it's not really possible for an app to do something that a determined enough security researcher couldn't ultimately detect if they were looking for it. When you can build your own version of the operating system and decompile the application easily, there's not really any other places to hide that won't give something away.

If you feel like your phone is acting off of a conversation you had without interacting with it, it's nearly always one of these three:

The vast majority of people are super predictable most of the time.
You are not accounting for other people in the conversation, who may well have just googled the thing. These companies know who you spend time with, they don't need a microphone for that.
Baader meinhof phenomenon

Don't get me wrong, I've thought surely something fishy was going on plenty of times, but the reality is, until someone can actually prove it (which is entirely possible to do if it's happening), it's gotta just be the above. We're being tracked a crazy amount, but it's not passively by microphones in our pockets

Note: none of this applies if you're actually being specifically individually targeted. All bets are off in that instance

[–] pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip 4 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

The first person to actually prove this whole mass spying via microphone to sell ads thing is actually happening, would be world-famous overnight.

The first person that proves that Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta are directly doing it, using their hardware vendors privilege - would be famous overnight.

But that won't happen, because they don't have to.

(Okay, it might still happen with Meta. I'm not sure those jackasses have any self respect.)

In general, the big vendors don't need to listen to anyone's microphone, because the average user installs a free flappy bird clone that runs the microphone continuously, and then sells that to absolutely every single limited liability corporation, coffee shop, or data broker - to correlate for advertising.

Saying "they're not using the microphone" is splitting hairs to death.

Yes, a few of the biggest players can't be arsed to directly use the microphone.

Instead they buy the result of malware microphone use indirectly from the malware pushers who do absolutely use the microphone.

Absolutely every tech company, employer and three letter agency is buying the content of your voice recordings through a form of Privacy Washing. They didn't collect it themselves, and they didn't look to closely at how it was collected, so it's okay, right?

For the average user, whose kid installed some stupid little free games, yes, someone is almost certainly "listening" right now, and all the time.

But they're not using it to decide who to arrest, who to deport, or who to hire or fire (for saying "union"), or whether you really need the salary you requested...unless they are.

And yes, finding out some of that would absolutely make the news, but those are harder to find out, and could go for decades undiscovered.

[–] dev_null@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 days ago

Yeah, but that malware flappy bird clone does need to ask for the microphone permission, and the clueless user does need to click agree, that yes they want Free Flappy Bird 100% Legit Pro to have access to their microphone. Yes it happens. But that's not what people mean they say that you should use a flip phone and get the battery out when you are not using it otherwise it's listening to you. No it's not listening to you unless you explicitly gave an app permission to listen to you.

[–] BeardedGingerWonder@feddit.uk 1 points 2 days ago

Oh Baader Meinhof phenomenon, I've been seeing that everywhere recently!