This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
I thought Android has a non bypassable green dot in the notification bar when the micro is on ?
is this still a surprise to anyone here?
Yes.
Not to you or me, but there are tons of people, even here, that are absolutely incredulous towards the idea that its possible.
Not helpful
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. :(
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...
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.
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.
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.
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
Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Among other things, sure. More simply, keyword analysis.
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text.
All of these "models" are useless garbage but it doesn't stop them from trying to absolutely cram them everywhere they can.
Unnecessary
None of what they do is "necessary". They could just ask you what your relevant interests are and you could tell them, but they do it anyway. They go to great lengths for any seemingly insignificant amount of data they can get their hands on.
But wouldnt it be a moot point if I restrict access to GPS for all apps?
How much of that data is from Google/Apple (e.g. Google Maps)?
If you use android google grabs your GPS data regardless, you have to root and disable it.
Apple does the same thing but they didn't have their pants occupied by third-party network's fingers like google did until the pixel came out.
Google maps is basically a beacon for AdMob to target you nearly perfectly.
Also using "fine location" in any app grabs the nearby wifi list and sends it to Google/apple if it's not cached.
Also most ad providers these days have made deals with major networks that let them tell what tower your IMEI pinged off of.
It's why google tried to push android/ad IDs, way less info for the networks to advertise over, and it also put the tracking in their hands instead.
So graphene os ir a degoolged phone solves the first thing
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! :)
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
Use NextDNS with strong filters and the DDG app with App Tracking Protection turned on. While no filter is 100% perfect, this combo stops the vast majority of privacy-invading shit from getting to 3rd parties.
I use shizuku for hidden api/shell access..the devs of that have an app called appops which, you guessed it, allow you to change any appops permission for any app. Allows denying/ignoring clipboard access, device identifiers, location, microphone, etc.
appops screenshots
App Ops still works? I haven't used it in over a decade.
ok thanks, but where's the list of these apps?
These type of articles never list the apps they're discussing.
And people wonder why I keep rooting my Android phones.
Without advanced permission denial and file access restrictions, phones will spy on anything and anyone.
That helps with other dangers, but in this case all you need to do is not give "Pool 3D" access to the microphone, no rooting required.
Article is from 2018. Someone must have pasted the url from hacker news where the same story was dug up recently.
