This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Good thing everyone diligently reads the T&A of Pool 3d before using it. You are reading every line of text before you hit agree, and then uninstall, right?
On the other hand, it's amazingly easy for advertisers to figure out what topics / products you're talking about without the need for constantly recording via your microphone. In most instances, it doesn't even really make sense to constantly record audio via the mic to monitor folks, other means are much more cost efficient while being just as effective. That's not to say that some app isn't or hasn't done it, just that historically speaking, it hasn't been as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think or imply.
Sometimes with these things, you have to apply Occam's Razor.
I stayed with some family during the holidays a few years ago and they are conspiracy theory fanatics unfortunately. The type that swear their phones are listening to everything they say. They get ads for things they've only ever talked about in person. That sort of thing.
As proof, they pointed out how the prior night the topic of old timey candy from our childhoods came up and all of a sudden they were getting news stories and facebook ads about those liquid filled wax bottle candies. To them, the only plausible explanation is that our phones were listening to us.
Except, as I pointed out, I specifically looked those wax bottle candies up later that night because I was curious if they were still for sale. They live way out in the country and there's limited cellular data, so basically everybody there that night was using the same wifi connection. Which means, our internet activity is all linked because to the outside world, we're all on the same network/IP address. Even more curious, though, nobody got ads for any of the other candy that we talked about and which I didn't specifically look up. So, if our phones were actually recording us and serving up ads based on the things we talked about, then why didn't we get ads for Blackjack gum, wax lips, and Brach's? Only the very specific one I happened to search for.
This is what a lot of people don't get. Plus often people see an ad or content and forget. Later they bring it up without realizing the thing is trending. It's all self feeding.
Go ahead, make TVs more smart. We literally removed our TV thus weekend. If you want me to upgrade it, please removed the spyware.
My tvs are connected to an SSID that can’t hit the internet. I blocked them before but my dumb ass neighbor left their WiFi unprotected and my tvs just connected to them because it couldn’t get out the internet on my network. So I created an SSID logged them in and blocked it from the internet. It doesn’t bounce to open WiFi anymore. If I block it completely from the network the WiFi just disconnects from the network because it can’t hit anything. I have LG’s.
The fact that they just desperately jump on any network is absurd. Its acting like malware.
That is an insane thing to have to do. Having to manipulate your TV into not doing something you don't want or require it to do.
Same. The only 'TV' I currently own is my monitor. Fuck that shit, I'm so over modern television as a concept.
No they dont , they dont have to. Far easier to get things other ways.
Yes, but also no. You're underestimating advertisers' greed for data.
It's actually trivial nowadays to build a background service like that.
Which would show up in network traffic , which it doesnt. There is no need for it.
I thought Android has a non bypassable green dot in the notification bar when the micro is on ?
Users need to know what this dot means, and some like children or the elderly will likely not understand the ramifications
I feel like you're missing the point. Showing a green dot still doesn't solve the problem or make it ok, especially when this technology works in the background and can capture sound even while the device is in your pocket, like the article says.
I don't think we should have to be on the lookout for a little dot showing up on the screen constantly. It shouldn't even ask for microphone access unless it's absolutely essential for the app's main purpose. "Features" like this should always be off by default and buried deep in the settings. If people really wanted it (they don't), they'd go in and turn it on themselves.
You're absolutely right but that wasn't my point. I thought that if one of my installed app was doing this, at some point I'd have seen it without even being on the lookout.
This is literally how it works. In modern android you need to explicitly grants microphone permission to apps the first time you use them. Now, if they are clickjacking the permission notification, that's something different, but the article doesn't mention this. You can download your own microphone logs and verify if you are curious about this.
It's probably bypassable too. And, anytime the microphone is used, you have no idea the multiple extents that data is being used for.
afaik Android System Intelligence and apps using that will not show the mic icon
is this still a surprise to anyone here?
I remember a bunch of people freaking out about this a few years ago and an equal number telling them they were paranoid.
You can talk about stuff and your phone will just magically start suggesting related items. Why would anyone be surprised the monitoring device in their pocket is monitoring them?
Anyone whos said anything outloud and then immediately got an ad should know by now that it isnt some conspiracy, its easily testable by not searching something and just talking about it while having an app open, the more obvious one they track is dms, if I dm someone something (text based not posts) ill get ads or posts related to it.
Im assuming they target your wifi too, because my ads change to reflect what I do on other devices too (always noticable as a hobby hopper)
Yes.
Not to you or me, but there are tons of people, even here, that are absolutely incredulous towards the idea that its possible.
I mean it implies that these apps are both violating permissions (in many cases) and the android visual indication of an active microphone. So far I have seen no actual proof that this is the case. Mic activity is logged. You can debunk this yourself easily.
I'm part of those people. The usual argument is that everybody's phone is listening all the time, without agreeing to permissions or showing the mic notification or anything like that. I've never seen any proof of that. This article is about a bunch of shovelware apps (Pool 3D, Beer pong: Trickshot, Honey Quest etc) that aren't even listed anymore. There's nothing about them skirting permissions or hiding the notification.
People see the headline and assume it's Facebook et al.
Not helpful
May be even dozens
This might just push my fear of targeted ads enough to give in to my idea of a nearly soundproof box for my phone when I'm not using it. :(
You could remove the mic and pretend it's a modern iPod 😁
Just install an OS that allows per-app microphone permissions. I'm running LineageOS and I can tell it for example to only allow Whatsapp mic access when I actively open the app. Actually according to the article, the same can be done on plain Android too.
Beer pong
Yeah that sounds like an app user who would be okay with his audio being recorded...
An app where all you end up recording is "Bro! Bro! Bro! Broseeeeph! Let's gooooooo, Bro!"
yeah, alphonso appeared on my mibox, eset called it a trojan right after the update. had to delete it through adb, cause its a "system app"
Reading this made me wonder if I was having a stroke, because it seems like English but I don't recognize so many of the words. 👴
I used to work for a mobile advertiser, and we installed hella bloatware on phones.
This idea was floated a couple times but was deemed not very effective cause you'd have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn't tell us much more than just having a week or so of GPS data, your Facebook profile, and your phone IMEI.
It's pretty easy to see if you're near a Popeyes and what other IMEIs are connecting to the same tower, extrapolate that to you being near your wife and you and your wife thinking about shit on the Popeyes menu.
Boom targeted ad/video for fried chicken.
The rest is general tech paranoia leading to Apophenia.
There's no microphones or cameras, it's just the already gigantic mountain of data anyone who uses a smartphone is constantly broadcasting getting ground through the big data machine that has been the pillar of all tech since the last recession.
Also, have you ever been butt-dialed by someone? 99% of the time you can't understand a single word, let alone enough to make any semantic sense out of.
If it's trying to figure out if you're watching Stranger Things it can look for when your stationary at home and just needs to record a few seconds at a time every few minutes. I don't know how the fingerprinting works. It might be able to run locally and not use a ton of power. We're talking Shazam, not full text transcription.
Here's the thing. If you watch that, Netflix know your IP. If you're on an Android TV box, Google will know your IP.
Odds are your phone is on the Wifi. Linked through IP. Now you get ads for Stranger Things on your phone. It doesn't need to listen because everything is so leaky. You are linked on so many devices.
you'd have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn't tell us much
I mean that could be solved as simply as a local transcription service...
And do what? Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text. That's something even the new fancy LLMs struggle with.
Unnecessary when there's way better targeted models trained on years of data that people willingly send as part of everyday smartphone use.
tf-idf will give you the keywords you want to target ads
Right around the confinement my sister and I were talking about getting some seeds for my mom. Neither of us searched for seeds. From that point we both started to get ads for seeds, many for the ones we had talked about in particular. This thing was so unequivocal that it proved to me that our phones listen. Maybe they don't analyze, but they definitely listen for words actionable for an advertising purposes.
More likely, your late'ish habits and searches combined with age and another mountain of data correlated with people that have the same thought. We are no snowflakes.
Edit: I should say, if this example is true. I'm not saying you are lying, just that if you are, it's not a "gotcha". This thread is making me paranoid! :)
The thing is you can test it, simply never search anything related to it and see if you get ads, maybe I accidentally searched something but it works, or it could be wifi based maybe they searched something and it effected everyones ads, this could make sense if my roommates searched stuff and it effected my ads
I happened to say out loud to my girlfriend that there is a chance (a small one) that my ADHD medication can cause something called TD (Tardive Dyskinesia).
Suddenly, our Netflix is showing adds for a new medication for it.
That's why i always forbid access to my microphones by apps. Many AI apps will also remember what you discussed long ago.
OS doesn't need permissions to access hardware
