Comment on People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you

• TimeSquirrel@kbin.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It most likely is

  Instead of guessing, you people need to learn to use Wireshark and find out for yourself.

  No, they don't just listen all the time with an open mic.

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  • SapientLasagna@lemmy.ca ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    Wireshark may or may not help you here. The proposed mechanism is abusing the wake words, which are processed locally on the device. Each marketing wake word could be processed, set a flag and go back to sleep with no network activity. Periodically a bit array of flags would be sent to the server with any other regular traffic (checking for notifications, perhaps). The actual audio never gets sent. I’m not saying that Facebook actually does this, but it’s a reasonable explanation for the behaviour seen in the Vice article.

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  • CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    No, they don’t just listen all the time with an open mic and just send all audio to the cloud. Anyone in cybersecurity would definitely notice that and sound the alarm.

    How would they though? The mic is already known to be always on, and what the servers/back-end are doing with the mic input data is not viewable/known by us. So how would they know?

    ~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~

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    • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If you're monitoring the traffic, and you start speaking, and you suddenly see pac6kers spewing out of a device every time you talk, that's a good indication. There's indirect methods to analyze it without necessarily being able to see the actual data.

      Poking around the PCB with an oscilloscope to see electrical signals will probably be useful too.

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      • CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

        If you’re monitoring the traffic, and you start speaking, and you suddenly see pac6kers spewing out of a device every time you talk, that’s a good indication. There’s indirect methods to analyze it without necessarily being able to see the actual data.

        Its already established that the mic always hot, and that data is always being sent to the sever.

        What they do with the data is not seeable by us. That is the point being discussed, do they listen in to non-initiate conversations and market off of that data to us.

        ~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~

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• CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

  It most likely is. And if it’s not your phone, then it’s your car (assuming it has been built in the last few years)

  Yeah that’s really creepy. I would only want the phone to listen when I actually ask it a question, not 24/7.

  ~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~

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  • coolmojo@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

    I would only want the phone to listen when I actually ask it a question, not 24/7.

    If the phone does not listen 24/7, then how does it know when you are asking a question? It should discard all information until the wake up word is called in theory. Only way it could work if you have to press a button to start listening to your question. This was the case in the past, however people wanted to ask questions while showering or something since they introduced this “improvement”.

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    • CosmicCleric@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

      If the phone does not listen 24/7, then how does it know when you are asking a question?

      I pushed the microphone button on the keyboard editor when I want the microphone to listen to me.

      ~Anti~ ~Commercial-AI~ ~license~

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