Does your cellphone listen to you

[Urbanized]

This thread took an odd turn.

[GoThunder]

I don’t have any evidence for or against this, though I do have several anecdotal instances of something like this occurring. Just today at lunch I was talking with a client and she mentioned building a deck in her backyard last summer. We talked about it for a minute or two and moved on. I have never built a deck, nor have I ever researched anything deck-related. About an hour after this conversation occurred I opened Twitter and lo and behold the “sponsored” tweets (ads) on my feed were from Lowe’s and other home improvement vendors promoting deck materials. I am on Twitter pretty often and have viewed countless sponsored tweets, none of which have ever been from A) a home improvement store or B) for anything related to decks. Was my phone listening? I have no idea. But this sort of thing has occurred in my social media feeds a handful of times.

[jerrywall]

This thread took an odd turn.

Sorry.

[dankrutka]

Good analysis, but it is relying a bit on Amazon... who is not transparent.

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...xa-spying-you/

[stile99]

I don't know (read: care) about Apple, but I know on Android you can selectively remove permissions. If you feel an app (like Twitter or Facebook) is listening to you, you can take away that app's permission to use the microphone.

As for a device like the Mini or Echo, it's really important to note that the family that claimed their Echo (a device that has a mute button, BTW, which works not to mute output from the device, but to mute YOU so it can't hear you) was spying on them 24/7 and sent a snippet of conversation to a random person for funsies actually triggered the device, triggered the function that calls a person, and then told the device who to call. They can claim it was an accident, and it might have been, but basically, they used the device for one of its intended functions. It's like saying you put a can of Coke in the freezer and left it too long, by the time you got back to it it was an exploded mess. Sure, it was an accident...but the freezer did exactly when everyone expects it to in this situation, nothing sinister.

[jn1780]

I think bottom line is that you shouldn't be using any device connected to "the cloud" if your paranoid about data security. Your entrusting a third party with your information when you do that. I would personally also try to limit single sign on services that google and facebook provides for other websites. If those accounts become comprised everything else is compromised. Plus, that's more data points that google and facebook can track.

[jerrywall]

I think bottom line is that you shouldn't be using any device connected to "the cloud" if your paranoid about data security. Your entrusting a third party with your information when you do that. I would personally also try to limit single sign on services that google and facebook provides for other websites. If those accounts become comprised everything else is compromised. Plus, that's more data points that google and facebook can track.

This. I accepted a long time ago that I have given up my right to privacy. I've been using social media for well over a decade, I'd had an online presence, and I have devices, several of them, that by technological design MUST be always listening to me (or else they wouldn't respond to OK GOOGLE or whatever). And they've admitted they use the background conversation to improve responsiveness.

This is just the way the world is now, unless you want to go live like the Unabomber.

[TheTravellers]

This. I accepted a long time ago that I have given up my right to privacy. I've been using social media for well over a decade, I'd had an online presence, and I have devices, several of them, that by technological design MUST be always listening to me (or else they wouldn't respond to OK GOOGLE or whatever). And they've admitted they use the background conversation to improve responsiveness.

This is just the way the world is now, unless you want to go live like the Unabomber.

I'll most likely never use any device that responds to verbal commands, so that's another way to do things and it's not going to the extreme of Unabomber-type living. For all the people that use Google, Amazon, Dish, whoever listening devices, there's most likely *way* more *not* using that kind of thing. Can you imagine a house with 4-5 people in it yelling at all their devices to do things? Misery...

[jerrywall]

We use it to mess with each other. It's like the time I got a friends phone to call his ex.

[dankrutka]

I don't think we should just accept surveillance because "that's the way the world is." On a personal level, there are a variety of simple steps you can take to increase your privacy including switching browsers, using good password apps, and turning off/blocking tech when not using it among others. On a interpersonal level, we should continue discussions like these and stay informed. On a civic scale, we should pressure lawmakers to pass laws that increase corporate and government transparency and limit data collection. There's a spectrum of choices and actions, not simply a binary of unabomber or surveillance acceptance.

[bradh]

The data thing is interesting. I care about my privacy, but also am I getting a better experience or being better served by a provider because they've figured out my trends and habits?

[emtefury]

You are not all crazy.

https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/w...s-not-paranoia

[jn1780]

The data thing is interesting. I care about my privacy, but also am I getting a better experience or being better served by a provider because they've figured out my trends and habits?

Not directly, but it is how their able to provide these services for "free". Facebook wouldn't be around if they had to start charging for their services. The analytics aspect is what brings marketing value.

[BBatesokc]

I personally am a fan of sites that rely on advertising to personalize the ads that are displayed for me. Several times those adds have exposed me to products and services I otherwise would never know existed. I've 'saved' some of these ads for future reference and even ordered a product or two (or 20) that was specifically the result of targeting me and my habits online.

We talk about Google, Amazon and Facebook..... Please, I (or anyone else in the public) can spend 20 minutes at the Court Clerks office and get all the names, addresses, driver's licenses number and social security numbers I want. Everything you need to fill out bogus credit applications, etc.

[Jersey Boss]

Not directly, but it is how their able to provide these services for "free". Facebook wouldn't be around if they had to start charging for their services. The analytics aspect is what brings marketing value.

You are no longer the customer of the product, you are the product. No thank you very much.