this post was submitted on 06 Apr 2026
306 points (94.2% liked)
Privacy
47894 readers
217 users here now
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.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Is there any hard evidence that supports the claim that an Android/Apple phone listens in on conversations?
Would take a whistleblower to expose these things, and usually its done many years after.
Also its not that there's some person currently listening. Its that they're storing and probably transcribing all communications for all time, so that at any moment in the future, they can target a person and look up that history.
Also we know google and apple have been forwarding all these to the US goverment also, since at least ~2011, via the prism program, and thanks to Snowden and Manning's leaks.
So no, and also no, I disagree. If phones did this, especially to custom-tailor ads, like I've seen claimed countless times, then security researchers would be perfectly capable of uncovering this behavior without someone on the inside.
Is this just more speculation? EDIT: I'm bringing this up because it weakens the argument for privacy. This is a huge claim and if it can be dismissed like this then people might dismiss everything else with it.
When you make calls via these services, the entirety of that data is being routed through their service. What you're asking is if google/apple actually stores that data. You should always assume they do, for a threat analysis.
I suggest reading about the Crypto AG honeypot scandal, which was a secure service that ran for over 60 years before it was revealed to be an CIA honeypot. Leaks in the future will likely reveal the same for US surveillance capital services.
I think this can be misconstrued a little bit. "Listening to conversations" could mean listening to phone calls, texts, etc, but it could also mean listening to conversations with people in real life.
yup. That's really it.
There's hard evidence everything transmitted is logged and that any phone capable of connecting to the cell network can be listened in on at any time. I would be very surprised to learn monitoring/logging like that was not the default at this point given the infrastructure we've publicly built for that purpose and just how easy to implement it's become. You think an on device assistant can help schedule and summarize your day but the NSA is going to opt out of those capabilities on principle and let that big ol Utah data center sit idle?
Snowden showed us ages ago that all phone conversations are recorded. This is fact.
Do phones record what we say outside of phone calls? If you have voice control enabled, yes.
Do phones listen even if that isn't enabled? Probably sometimes, but I don't know that for sure.
No, it is trivial to verify it by checking your data usage. We have these AI devices (one of them is called friend) that actually do listen to you the whole time and even they do a terrible job of transcription. That's when people wear them like pendants.
Now imagine using a phone instead that's sometimes in the pockets, in the bag or just on the table. Speech recognition errors would be terrible. Even worse when the speech isn't english. Use recommendation engines on this crap data and it'll be an advertising disaster!
Lolz. Close your mouth you’re gonna catch a fly