Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones
Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones
Software from a company called Alphonso can be used to listen in to the environment around a user, to work out what they’re watching
PLEASE SKIM THE ARTICLE BEFORE COMMENTING
Here's the part that most people seemed to miss:
With your permission provided at the time of downloading the app, the ACR software receives short duration audio samples from the microphone on your device.
Help, I installed a microphone app on my phone and it's working as a microphone, what should I do?
Article from 2018. Not worth recycling. Mostly FUD.
While Alphonso hasn’t revealed the names of these apps, Pool 3D, Beer Pong: Trickshot, Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin and Honey Quest all feature the technology.
Oh look, they're all shitty games that hook people like gambling sites. Whoever would have thought!
Fuck that. Facebook, Amazon, Google, Instagram, TikTok, etc., are all spying on everyone.
But those apps don't use the microphone, or have a plausible excuse to use the microphone, so it's okay!
(This is sarcasm. It's not okay.)
The apps need permission to the microphone for that and in background it would drain the battery and constantly show the microphone is accessed unless you are using an old android version. It is likely easy though to eavesdrop when the app is opened and using microphone is an expected functionality, and to pick up keywords and the sounds emitted from other sources to better know location and social graphs without GPS access.
Who didn't know this?
"Yeah, me and my wife were talking about a new driveway, the next we knew we were both getting ads for driveway paving companies. The news says it's just a coincidence..."
My wife and I were driving down the highway and I saw an old Cadillac, and I said, “hey, I like that old Cadillac.” Not even an hour later I got a facebook marketplace notification about a Cadillac for sale near me. I have NEVER searched for Cadillacs for sale.
I've had things like this happen, and I always suspected it was Facebook itself doing it, but now I think it's also likely its something else feeding info into an ad system that then shows the ad on Facebook.
Every now and then I'll just blurt out random things I want that I'd never want to see if I can trigger getting ads for it. Hasn't happened in quite awhile now, probably because restrictions on doing it are getting better.
All of the discourse around "we can't prove they are listening" feels like gaslighting, to me.
I don't need proof. We have all have had this experience, and "it's just tracking absolutely everything else so well that it guesses really accurately" isn't in any way better, anyway.
It isn’t better, it’s even worse IMO. But it’s just the truth. It is verifiable enough that apps cannot just spy via your microphone in any reasonably modern OS, not even the old versions. What has never been verified though is that there are non-zero-day-exploit-ways to spy through your microphone.
It can be proven, very easily. All it takes is a little bit of IT skills and a basic understanding of networking. There are also immense amounts of incentive to prove it. Your information would be spread across every news network, and you'd be able to use it to sue any business that does it.
So, the only reason it can't be proven is because it's not happening.