Hört Ihr Telefon Ihnen wirklich zu? Das wissen wir
https://www.newsweek.com/phone-voice-assistants-active-listening-consent-targeted-ads-1949251
Hört Ihr Telefon Ihnen wirklich zu? Das wissen wir
https://www.newsweek.com/phone-voice-assistants-active-listening-consent-targeted-ads-1949251
37 Kommentare
Submission statement: If you think your phone may be quietly listening to your conversations, you may be right. A Cox Media Group pitch deck obtained by 404 Media details Cox’s „active listening“ AI software, which listens for cues to things you may buy, then serves your phone ads for these. Similar systems appear to be offered by other companies.
Yes it is. But why is targeted advertising all sex toys and improbable camping gear?
It is listening to me. When I say I like feet I don’t mean foot products Google.
We all already know this since Ok Google. The fight is to prove
When talking to someone about some random thing that I haven’t otherwise shown interest inn and then getting ads for it for the first time 15 minutes later is a regular occurance you’re never going to convince me my phone isn’t listening to me.
About 10 years ago, my dad asked me about taking a flight to Guadalajara, Mexico. We’ve never discussed this before, and I’ve never gone on line to look for a flight to Mexico.
I told my dad I didn’t have time to look it up since I had to be somewhere soon.
Later when I was free, I opened up the Facebook app and the first ad I see is flights to Guadalajara for $300.
I deleted that app immediately and never used it since.
It’s more than just advertisement. One day I was explaining a TV show to my 19 year old daughter. It was the Adam’s Family. We talked about the show for a few minutes. Moments later I open My laptop, go to Youtube. The first video offered up by Youtube was one on the Adams Family. This kind of scenario has happened multiple times. Talk about a product in your home. Wham!!! Ads for that Item pop up. I hate it. It’s akin to being haunted.
Posted this previously in a different thread. But there has definitely been some weird shit happening for years now. About 6 years ago I was having a conversation with my gf’s kids about LEGOS. Never have I typed or searched for anything LEGO on my phone. Not even in a text (I searched later on). Within an hour I was being assaulted with LEGO ads.
More recently, I was browsing Reddit and r/actionfigures trying to help identify some obscure figure. There was a picture containing manufacturing info on the figures butt that I decided to search. Tell me why, that with only the first two numbers, it auto filled the entirety of the manufacturers info into my browsers search bar? Two numbers. I typed two numbers, 1 & 9, and it autofilled “1996 Hasbro Pawtucket GI Joe”…
Something fucky is going on.
I mean ya, if you download an app and agree to let it listen to your mic, it’s going to listen to your mic… I assume that would be somewhat obvious?
What makes me skeptical of this is those popular social media apps aren’t magic, plenty of security researchers will have ripped them apart, run them in all sorts of simulated environments etc. If there was any unusual mic usage I can’t imagine we’d only find out about it from an accidental reveal in a press release.
I think Google knows what is being Googled in an area or shop or at home. I have 2 phones, 1 work, 1 personal and no connected accounts between them. Yet I’ll get an ad for something I googled on the other. Maybe because I’m on the same wifi?
Depends on the apps you install and the permissions you grant.
Smart TVs and other devices are much worse. They have way worse ToS and PP. my LG TV was crazy (high-end model mind you). Would mention something in the room and 5 minutes later get an ad online for it.
Turned that shit off and i don’t see it happening anymore.
Yes and no… Some dodgy apps (like those referenced by the Cox report) may be physically listening and they would then use that data to target you on Facebook, Google and the like. These are mostly limited to Android though.
However, Facebook and Google themselves are not listening, as they don’t need to! They have already built up a persona of who you are and what you are likely to do. The ads that “magically” appear out of the blue (as if they are listening) are because they have successfully predicted your behaviour (Facebook algorithms can sometimes predict a woman is pregnant before she even knows). There is also a physiological explanation for such things – but I’ll leave that to the psychologists on here.
I don’t care what the studies say, I have personally seen the evidence of this 100%.
5 years ago, I returned to Pennsylvania when my father died. While there, I caught up with old friends amd one of them was telling me about her husband’s DUI. A bit later I got on my facebook and had a Ad for DUI lawyers in PA, A state i hadn’t lived in for over a decade, and a crime I had never committed.
Without listening, there is no way that ad would have popped for me.
I learned this a few years ago. A coworker of mine was telling me that phones DO listen to you. He said that he and some friend were talking about patio furniture one day. Then an hour later he was scrolling thru his phone and a bunch of patio ads came up. Pretty crazy if you ask me
I don’t know why but I think we are heading towards Crying Suns Dystopia…
Yes of course. And it’s so so so much worse than that. You tv is listening, your smart devices are, anything connected to wifi is listening. Your roomba is selling your floor plan, your tempurpedic bed is selling your sounds and sleep info.
Every single thing is selling your data. And what’s worse is there are 0 laws regulating it. So data brokers don’t have to have correct info they just need to sell it to others who cross it with other info.
It has serious effects on your credit history, your medical outcomes, etc.
Here are 4 books on it.
The Age of Surveillance Capitalism
The Black Box Society
The Afterlives of Data
Revolutionary Mathematics
We know and believe other things like how the government is spying on us, but somehow believe that companies having targeted ads is too much.
Like they’re definitely developing these targeted ads, and they definitely are testing these on humans surely.
Governments already know this. The US goverment and it’s defense contractors have already had to modify their security policies in certin secured areas to ban all phones and smart watches, including company issued phones with custom security software installed because anyone can unintentionally download an app on the non secure side of the phone that will listen in.
All I had to do is swipe left for evidence of this. Gf said she wanted to visit India. I said I’d rather go to Tokyo first but Mumbai would be cool to see. Now I have a Mumbi add. I’m not even sure if that is actually in India but no I won’t Google it and make things worse.
Just yes. Of course it is. If it can respond to „ok Google“, then it’s listening always.
Many phones let you turn sensors off (disables mic/camera) in your dev options and if you have them off for a few weeks you kinda don’t notice the change.
BUT, If I turn sensors back on for too long and I talk about something that interests me I will be bombarded with ads for that specific thing immediately.
It’s extremely obvious after the first time it happens that something in accessing my mic, and being as I don’t want to dig around for the culprit– I just keep the mic disabled unless I need to call someone or take a video.
This was the Grand Bargain: we’d give up a little privacy but in return we only get ads targeted to our personal interests.
The reality is, we’ve given up all our privacy to unanswerable data brokers, and still get buried in crap. Nobody spends the time to target effectively, and nothing stops the mass-marketers from mindlessly spamming us everywhere.
Your phone totally does. Facebook and Google scrape your conversations for advertising.
A random woman talked to me about a company called Stretch Lab when I was in Northern California. I’d never heard of stretch lab, never searched for it in any app. My phone wasn’t even open at the time so all Siri is supposed to be listening for is “Hey Siri.” A half hour later I started getting ads for the Stretch Lab location 3 miles from my house, in Southern California, 500 miles to the south. My phone is definitely listening to me.
About six months or so ago, one of the smoke detectors in my house had a battery running low. It started chirping like they do.
I let it go for a few days out of laziness before I finally changed the battery.
I never discussed it with anyone, didn’t do any searches about it (I knew what it was), didn’t buy batteries, I had some.
The day after I changed the battery almost every suggestion on YouTube was either how to maintain smoke detectors or comedy shorts about going to people’s houses with chirping smoke detectors. Every ad everywhere else was related to smoke detectors and fire safety.
After that, I deleted every social media app and all other apps and games that share data and changed my phone settings to private.
I took my smart tv offline and just use a cheap mini pc with firefox outfitted with adblocker and run a Jellyfin server for movies and shows so no streaming services either.
I have not gotten one robocall scam since and my spam folder is basically empty. I haven’t seen an ad in months and my life is all the better for it.
Literally just happened. I’m sitting in a clinic waiting room w my GF. I mentioned to her that after we leave we should go look for a specific breakfast item (called pancita …we’re in Mexico). She opens her phone (insta I think) and the first thing it shows is an ad for pancita. We did not Google it first.
Just because you see the ad on your phone doesn’t mean it’s listening to you. What if *something else* is listening/influencing you and it’s updating your advertising profile? You then see the results of that on your phone.
Has anyone else noticed that the denials from Facebook always mention the microphone? They always say: “We’re not using your phone‘s microphone to listen to your conversations.” It’s weird. Could they be using something else in the phone? The speaker maybe?
Bro this isn’t even up for debate, of fucking course they are. We don’t need a study to confirm this
An easy way to test is to repeatedly speak a certain brand throughout the day and check if ads start popping up on your phone.
I remember talking to someone about getting a PO Box, and then shortly after that I started getting ads for PO Boxes when I’ve never seen ads for them before. Never searched for them on Google or anything either.
I read a comment here that basically said something to the effect of „it’s scarier if my phone isn’t listening because that means they know me better than I know myself.“
So years back they were testing and implementing a system that emitted an inaudible audio signal (you can’t hear it) from your tv while watching, and your phone was actually able to sense it. The software to detect it would be piggy backed and installed from some other 3rd party app and ran in the background. Once the phone hears the signal, it communicates back to their server to verify what you were watching, as it knew what signal happened at what time. This would allow them to collect data about your watching habits, location, and what ads you were subjected to. Then using this info they could target you based on what they knew.
I had a college roommate who was an exchange from India, he was typically speaking Hindi when I was around.
Surprise surprise when the next morning I’m getting ads in Hindi from YouTube.
If you know a Google Pixel and have now playing activated (It is on by default), your phone can tell you which song is being played around you. And it keeps a list of every song you heard while having the phone with you. The Google Recorder app is capable of transcribing audio and also tell you if it involves two or more speakers.
If that phone is capable of this, how hard is it for it to listen to your conversations, transcribe into it words. Then check to see if those words match certain keywords and then serve you ads based on those keywords?