Technology

Apps listening to your mic to give you targeted ads is an urban legend. There's tools to see which apps listen to you and there isn't any evidence that any of the popular stuff ever open the microphone (unless you're in a call or something). If you're too worried about it, you can always turn off the mic permission for the app.

The ads are actually coming from other ways of tracking you like browser fingerprinting to follow what things you browse and build a profile on what you like/are interested in.

See also EFF's article on it: https://www.digitalrightsbytes.org/topics/is-my-phone-listening-to-me

I talk to my father on the phone.

We finish.

I receive ads for a very specific thing that we talked about that I’ve never ever looked up.

Same thing with my therapist.

We talk. I receive highly specific ads.

Instagram showed me an ad for a medical condition I only discussed out loud, in person, in my doctors office.

Instagram was immediately uninstalled that day.

I'm not saying it's completely 100% not possible and has never happened in the history of human technology, but the situation is not as ubiquitous as most people seem to think it is.

Don't get me wrong, collecting and inferring personal information is happening on an epic and ubiquitous scale these days, but for the most part, it's not the microphones on your devices that are doing the data collection.

Pretty much all my older relatives are completely convinced their phones are listening to their day to day conversations and serving up ads based on those conversations. One of them came to visit me for a week over the summer. One night we had been talking about having asparagus for dinner, and as evidence that their phone was listening to us, the next day they showed me that their news feed was filled with asparagus recipes. Another night, we were talking about one of their medical conditions and the drugs they were taking, and the next day they showed me that they got notifications about a prescription drug for that condition. On another day, we had been talking about a specific actor's filmography and all their movies that we liked, the next day their streaming video app was suggesting a bunch of content from that actor.

I can understand why this seemed pretty convincing that our phones were listening to us, but consider the simpler explanation.

I live in a rural area where there's not good cellular reception, so for the most part, our phones are connected via wifi to the same internet connection. Essentially, every device on the property has the same external IP address. So, when I looked up asparagus recipes on my laptop later that night because I wanted to surprise my relative with that specific dish, and when I Googled the prescription medication the relative was taking to see what the side effects where, and when I looked up that actor on IMBD to see what all movies they'd been in, that pretty much gave all the advertisers all the information they needed to start targeting ads and recommendations to folks sharing the same IP address.

Occam's Razor being what it is, I assume that's how things went down versus all our conversations being constantly recorded and uploaded to the net to be interpreted and used for the purposes of serving ads.

Believe it, don't believe it, some people believe the earth is flat, and 5G gives you cancer

404 Media previously reported Cox Media Group (CMG) was advertising a service that claimed to target ads based on what potential customers said near device microphones. Now, here is the pitch deck CMG sent to prospective companies. Google has kicked CMG off its Partner Program in response.

ITT:

People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they wouldn’t use the most obvious one?”

vs.

People saying “They already use every other bit of data they can access, why do you naive optimists think they would need to use the most expensive one?”

Why wouldn't you think this? There is no system in place for monitoring those companies, nor is there any type of punishment for if they were to be proven to be doing so. While on the other hand, there are piles of money to be made from advertisers for allowing exactly that to happen.

I've personally had things come up as being advertised to me after being NEAR people talking about those items, and I have seen several videos where people show this effect in action.

Frequency illusion is real, but is not reliable enough to repeat over and over, back to back, unlike the advertising.

When, ever, have the capitalist companies prioritized morality over money? Never.

On Android, I have the mic, location, and camera blocked via the pulldown tiles menu. I turn them on when needed. The OS and some apps like to bitch about this sometimes but it seems to be working ok.

My iphone does not offer these blanket blocking options. It's a work phone, so I just leave it off unless I need it.

I don't either hut the alternative is much worst in my opinion. It would mean the algorithms are so advanced they are predicting conversations instead of listening to them.

Ads aren't why you should be concerned about apps w/ microphone access...

Where exactly are you getting the idea that this belief is widespread?

Timely. https://apnews.com/article/apple-siri-iphone-lawsuit-settlement-9b8ab3e079ae6962435f38eddb937b39

Yes Apple.

Aw jeez not this again.

battery life would fall through the floor if they did spy