this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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Our phones DO listen to our voices 24x7 (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 week 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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[โ€“] [email protected] 32 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

This may be a simple coincidence. Maybe you had similar YouTube suggestions in the past but you didn't pay attention because they come at random times. Like if you drive a Honda Civic, you tend to spot all the Honda Civic in the street.

There would be an interesting experiment to make though:

  1. Take a snapshot of your YouTube recommandations
  2. Choose a subject that has nothing to do with any of the recommandations, let's say "travel to the Bahamas"
  3. Hold a conversation with someone with both your phone's present, mention several time going to the Bahamas.
  4. Check YouTube again, si if the topic of Bahamas is appearing.
  5. Choose another topic not covered by your recommendations, let's say collecting stamps
  6. Put your phones away, have a conversation about collecting stamps
  7. Check YouTube recommandations
[โ€“] [email protected] 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The problem comes is the suggestion of travelling to destination X (in your case, the Bahamas) doesn't just pop up out of thin air - friends may have travelled there recently, perhaps there has been a recent advertising push, etc.

Another family member looking up some destinations to travel, then speaking with you later - same external IP of the home wifi being reported, bam you get advertised the destinations they looked at the most.

Choosing a "random" topic again also doesn't come out of thin air.