Submitted 2 days ago by Olap@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/they-spy-on-you-but-not-like-that/
Not my title! I do think we are being listened to. And location tracked. And it’s being passed on to advertisers. Is it apple though? Probably not is my take away from this article, but I don’t trust plenty of others, and apple still does
I’ve literally seen advertisements for products that I was talking about but explicitly did not search for on any device.
It’s literally a thing that happens.
“I’ve seen it first-hand” isn’t significant evidence because the frequency illusion effect is a thing. If you see dozens of ads a day and ignore them unless you notice them matching something you talked about, you’ll end up thinking ads can track what you talk about whether or not it’s true.
While i understand and agree with the premise, i think it’s lacking context. It is quite disturbing to have an obscure conversation (you know, we’ve never been to tahiti), and suddenly you’re getting banner ads or sponsored results about trips to tahiti.
This is absolutely a thing that happens. It happens to my wife frequently (the amount of times i hear giggling, i was just talking about that! Now I’ve got an ad! What a coincidence!), but i disabled all my google permissions (outside of location for maps), so it doesn’t seem to happen to me at all.
I would agree with you about the frequency illusion effect IF it weren’t something very specific and niche.
It is literally a thing that happens.
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.
See also EFF’s article on it: digitalrightsbytes.org/…/is-my-phone-listening-to…
agreed. online tracking is so good it just seems like they’re listening to you.
The ones serving up the ads aren’t listening. They’re buying collated data from many different sources, then their algorithm matches your interests with one of the products they’re contracted to sell.
Jfc, finally some sanity in this thread. Thank you. You’d think a bunch of supposed computer nerds would have done a fucking experiment before going off on some anecdotal bullshit.
I’m not so sure. When my partner and I were on a road trip we had android auto connected and were singing along to songs we listened to via Spotify. At some point though, when I tried to fiddle with some settings the connection between the car and the smartphone bugged out and while trying to fix it we suddenly heard his voice being played back on the speakers “whispering” some lyrics he had sung 30 to 60 minutes earlier.
I put whispered in quotes because he certainly didn’t whisper those lyrics and I recalled the moment he sang them quite clearly. Beside his singing and the music playing there were no other sounds at that time.
My best guess is that he was actually recorded while singing and something was stripping all the background noises and music to make his speech more clear for speech to text analysis. It was creepy as fuck.
We both work in IT and I truly have no other idea what this could have been given the circumstances. He said there is actually a company that provides a framework that listens to, records and analyses whatever is spoken near smartphone microphones and all the big tech players like Google are using it. I don’t remember the name though. Would have to ask him.
That’s the most unlikely story I’ve heard in a minute… Even assuming there’re some deep rooted kernel level shenanigans, which no one has found yet, how would you fiddling with some settings expose that?
Probably just got a dropped call, and it resumed the playlist in shuffle, I’ve had it happen where the music comes out as if in a phone call (messes up frequencies) for a few seconds before it goes back to normal. Occam’s razor and all
The worse part is, they don’t really need to bug your mic to figure out what you are talking about to target ads to you. The best sales leads are the family and friends of your existing customers. So say you talk to you coworker about how they switched to this new diaper rash cream for their baby. You might not have a baby but you talked about it and somehow you got ads for diaper rash cream. What really happened though is that your coworker bought their cream on Amazon and that brand purchased target ads for everyone whose location data was nearby them. Or they bought it for everyone whose phone was connected to the same IP address. We have so much data tracked about us that they can guess what we are talking about without actually having to tap our phone lines
In addition to location, the data collected moreso resemble demographics than specifics. And on some of the most mundane shit at first glance, but actually gives a very clear picture of the consumer. Things like 1. OS installed 2. version of OS installed 3. Battery percentage 4. Total device memory 5. Remaining total memory and more things like that.
I liken it to how a psychic fools people into thinking they are magical when really they are incredibly perceptive and experienced in making judgements based on client’s clothes, appearance, demeanor, etc before they even open their mouths.
In September, I was using reddit, had an iPhone, etc. I was generally aware of digital privacy, probably moreso than the average person, but by no means was I knowledgeable.
I was running a beta on my iPhone at the time, for context. I had a short conversation with my roommate while my phone was in my pocket. I took it out to text my partner and pressed the dictation button. My phone proceeded to type out the majority of the conversation I had had maybe five minutes earlier with my roommate. Literally ruined my ignorance is bliss and now I have a Pixel with grapheneos and use almost exclusively open source software with a major focus on privacy. Obviously this is an anecdote from some idiot online and I can’t verify what I’m saying at all, but the experience definitely shook me.
I once worked in a charity providing mental health services to people without insurance, or who wanted to not have their insurance record the service for whatever reasons.
I once had a homeless man that I would see regularly. We set up each appointment at the end of the preceding appointment, because the only other way to get a hold of this person would be to call the fast food place he worked at, during his work hours, which weren’t consistent. This man did not own a phone, or any other electronic device. His facebook, and all of his online activity was done at his local library. I emphasize this because I need it to be stressed that there was no way any algorithm could connect his location to mine. There was no way for a system to recognize that his device was near mine, because he did not have a device. There was no way for any of his online habits to be algorithmically connected to mine, at all.
One session, we’re speaking. The only devices in our small, sound proofed room, were my cell phone, a digital clock not connected to any system, and a digital camera, turned off, and also not connected to any system. He mentions that he’s been contacted by someone who wants him to move to the Phillipines. We briefly discuss flights and work in the Phillipines. Then we move on to other things, yadda yadda, end session.
By the end of the day, I’m getting ads on Facebook for flights to the Phillipines. Freaked me the fuck out because those sessions are HIPAA protected. From then on I kept my phone turned off, and in a completely different room in our building than any of my sessions with any patient. Never ever had it happen again.
Difficult to judge. Could be confirmation bias, as well. Meaning you got ads for flight before. But you didn't pay attention to them at that point. Which changed after your session and now you think these are connected. Or you looked something up about that location and that kicked it off.
These are the usual findings in the rare cases people are able to trace it back and they write some article or podcast about it. Mainly confirmation bias. And once you interact with one ad that got you taken aback, you're trapped.
Doesn't rule out other possibilities, though. I guess what I'm trying to say is, this counts more as anecdotal evidence. And we have plenty stories like this.
How many anecdotal stories before it becomes data? If hundreds of people are saying that this happens and there’s no other explanation? Thousands? How many things can be written off as “Oh, something you don’t understand is happening, even if we can rule out basically everything.” ?
Great story.
Even if anecdotal fuck all of that better safe than sorry.
My dad use to say that Facebook listened to him back in the 2010s.
He would say diamond ring diamond ring diamond ring and then all his ads would change next day. We blew him off as conspriatorial and now the algorithm is common knowledge.
Who knows. Scary.
I’ve had a very similar experience.
Once discussed something, out of the blue, something I’ve never been curious about in my life, in the car, with a friend who also has never thought about the same thing.
Hours later we’re both seeing related ads.
Now, I get that the amount of data required for such analysis is supposedly outside the bounds of what phones can do. But I can’t see any other explanation. Neither of us ever searched anything in this subject, we talked about doe a couple minutes and moved on, never doing anything about it. We have very different interests, too.
Same here. Confidential discussion with lawyer/ doctor/ pharmacist, get relevant ads at once. Therefore, I made it a habit to completely turn off my phone before entering such situations, and, if I can, put it in a switched-off microwave, Snowden-style.
What made you bring up the Philippines in the first place? Even if you have not been served ads before then, or the other guy. Someone either of you have interacted with could’ve done who brought up the Philippines to you or them.
And because there’s an ongoing campaign in your area, eventually you’ll get one of them ads too.
As I said in the original post, the client was contacted by someone over social media about moving to the Phillipines for work. It turned out to be a scam. Nobody else I interacted with made any mention of the Phillipines to me.
This is a great case of confirmation bias, too. The one time your ad happens to match a conversation you had earlier, you’ll be convinced forever, and tell everyone you know about it. The ten million other times you have a conversation that doesn’t appear in your ads will go unnoticed.
Except it is also listening. This was a minor scandal back in September. I believe Cox media has since been dropped by Facebook and Google and such, but it happened.
What’s Happening: In a pitch deck that has surfaced since the initial story broke out, Cox Media Group (CMG), a digital marketing outfit based out of Atlanta, Georgia, was spotted touting “the power of voice” in a pitch. In it, they outlined how they can use AI to collect and analyze voice data from users through more than 470 sources.
That article covers a pitch deck by an ad agency with absolutely zero detail of how it works.
If this is happening, it should be easy to test.
phew
The comments here show the real problem, adverts dont have to say why they’ve been selected.
All online ads should have to say which filters they matched to advertise to you. The advertising in most cases now is centralised into Google or Facebook, this is absolutely technically possible.
All online ads should have to say which filters they matched to advertise to you.
According to the Signal foundation, the reverse is true. They claim they got banned for revealing that info.
Wow.
This gives me that gut uneasy feeling. Those grabs are hyper specific examples.
Sharing data with the plebs is the true crime.
Literally the news story that this author cites as motivation for writing this article in the preamble to the article.
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.
It can always be explained by something else. Recency bias being a big one. It’s very possible you saw an ad yesterday as well, but didn’t notice you saw it because you haven’t talked about that item. Talk about it today, see the same ad, and now you think you’re being listened to.
It’s very possible your father googled something after hanging up the phone. There are endless ways they can connect you to knowing your father.
It’s possible someone on the same wifi network as you or your father overheard the conversation and looked it up.
All of these are far more likely than everything you say and do being recorded without anyone ever finding any definitive proof.
There have been ad agencies who have claimed to be able to do this, so they would if they could. www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-l…
Except I’ve had experiences that aren’t explainable by alm this:
Discussing a random, never-thought-of-before idea with a friend, in the car. Neither of us had ever thought of this thing before (honestly don’t recall now what it was). Discussed it for 2 minutes, then moved on.
Later we’re both seeing related ads, yet neither of us searched for anything.
And it was something way out of left field for both of us, that neither of us had ever thought of before. The related ads were so jarring that we both told each other about it.
Oh, and my phone was rooted, de-googled (lineage), with heavy restrictions for the apps, no social media (I still don’t have any accounts with any of them, except here), etc. The other phone was an iPhone.
Ever had a free free flowing conversation for hours?
You talk about things you wouldn’t possibly think of alone because of the other person.
Im located in Germany ne I guess many of you people are have not yet been victim of this, else you would agree with me.
Perhaps they track who you talk to and show you ads that are relevant to those people, or their best guess based on two profiles.
I don’t think there’s a data center out there with a live audio stream of literally billions of always-on devices 24/7/365.
Perhaps there’s some local processing first, but devices have permissions for apps, and lights that indicate the mic/camera is in use.
I figure someone would have figured it out by now (reverse engineering, decompiling code), or someone from Google would have leaked it if it were true. Think of the number of people required to keep this secret.
And yet my android phone is able to detect what song is playing 24x7 without being a noticeable drain on the battery or using extra data. Doesn’t seem far fetched to be able to do keyword spotting under the same constraints.
Here’s one example of a company getting caught: m.economictimes.com/news/…/113071827.cms
No. With my therapist I talk randomly about so many things. It’s impossible to predict or calculate.
Also I talk to my therapist in person while the phones ninny pocket or table.
So I’m hearing that you don’t use an adblocker.
Only on Spotify, which is another scandal
I think we will need a few more lawsuits such as Apple has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit alleging that its virtual assistant, Siri, recorded users’ conversations without their consent before this is no longer treated as confirmation bias or people been paranoid.
My wife used to tell me that her adds would change after discussing something and at first I did not believe her, but it just kept happening again, and again. It reached the point that we would put our phones away, discuss something and there is no change in ads about the topic. If we had our phones near adds would change.This would happen on things that we would not see adds for normally. For example we would discuss a trip to a place we have never been and she would start seeing adds about the destination after that.
Ads is from advertisement, not adds
Yeah it would be pretty annoying if her active director domain changes that often.
This article’s preamble cites this news story as the motivation for writing the rebuttal presented.
I’ll tell you my story, believe it or not.
I had a Samsung phone. got sick and tired of getting not just targeted advertising about shit I had spoken about, buy also targeted emails as well. really freaky shit.
I switched phones. got a fairphone with e/os.
it’s been about 2 years now. my old Samsung is a phone I use strictly for work. it only exists inside my office and is never taken outside of the room.
ALL my ads and emails are about work related topics now.
I could talk about stuffing cheetos up my rectum outside my office and never see an ad for chester cheetah. as soon as I say anything about it in the office, boom!
Sure, Google, or Amazon, or Facebook may not be listening to you…but that doesn’t mean Samsung someone isn’t listening and selling them that information.
You are in the same geolocation as other people and they are searching for the stuff you’re talking about. Try whispering to your phone alone in a closet.
I’m not ready for that kind of intimacy.
location data is turned off on my new phone, I also have it spoof my location if it’s ever on.
if what you said were true, then why did my targeted ads completely change to products or services entirely related to my job?
shouldn’t it contain other products that my neighbors are searching for?
Have you considered carbon monoxide poisoning? Maybe the disoriented you is snitching on you to advertising companies (/s just in case it is not clear).
Not surprising. Samsung is one of the most openly spying and breaking laws. They’ve also been caught spying on their customers’ tv microphones.
Using your search data is bad enough
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.
Other methods of data collection can be scarily effective. Stores have identified people were pregnant before they knew.
Very likely they identified you as someone that could have that condition, and you noticing the ads after talking to your doctor is a form of recency bias.
You can collect almost all the same data from traditional surveillance methods. Collecting and processing mocrophone data just isn’t effective enough to make up for the massively increased costs from processing it.
It displayed the ad before I could get home and research it. It had only been discussed out loud and in person.
As much as I logically know this to be the case, especially now that Android and iOS indicate when things like the mic are active… My brain still wants to reject it because it is just too coincidental.
I do not trust mic switches however, unless someone can provide proof that it physically disconnects the circuit to that microphone, it can be bypassed somewhere and there’s no reason to trust the manufacturer.
I hate to add to the conspiracy, but I know my eye doctor uses a 3rd party which has sections of their hipaa privacy acceptance which allows them to use your info to sell you ads if you don’t decline. Phreesia, is the 3rd party company. Now add the other apps that track your location… time spent there…
and I know my grocery store does the same when you use the discounts. and worse, they have facial recognition so I can’t even opt out (kroger).
Your issue was likely a combo of that.
Can’t be facial-recognized if you always wear an N95 mask in stores ;)
Your age group, sex, location, profession/industry, income estimation - you can assume they have this data.
That + a few data points that could be tracked by apps or websites:
Cross some of that, personal info, and ads of treatments for conditions of X.
That said, if it’s a fairly common condition, it might be the case you were presented the ad before and never noticed it.
None of those data points apply. It was nothing I had searched for or spoken to anyone until I saw the doctor that day and the Instagram ad was present by the time I had driven home, specifically mentioning the clinical term mentioned by the doctor.
It wasn’t even the stated reason for my visit, it was an afterthought at the end of the appointment… “Oh yeah, as long as I’m here, what is this…?”
One of my weirder hobbies is trying to convince people that the idea that companies are listening to you through your phone’s microphone and serving you targeted ads is a conspiracy theory that isn’t true.
ARS said, that reuters said, that users said.
Someone needs a new hobby. “Proof” from 3 layers of journalists interpreting a case that they themself said never went to court. Trying to use evidence of absence as proof will never win any hearts in a debate.
I didn’t seriously believe it happened either for quite some time because confirmation bias is a bitch. But I’ve seen it happen a few times where it would have to be a seriously unlikely coincidence.
If it was searched for in Google, Facebook, apple, or whatever sure
If it was correlated with locality and time, sure.
You can infer a lot from a few searches but there are times where nothing was searched for and a novel concept came out of conversation and book there’s ads and search completion for it.
Maybe, just maybe, someone settling a lawsuit without being found guilty, doesn’t ACTUALLY mean they’re innocent.
Quick experiment. If you don’t own a dog or a cat, talk about buying dog or cat food a couple times today.
about buying dog or cat food a couple times today.
I have both, also, if it’s real, you’d have to match up with an advertiser that really wants your profile.
I search for crap all the time but don’t get ads most of the time, then one time, I look up this one kaz air filter and get nothing but ads for it for a week. hundreds of home depot ads.
So Apple and Google have created the most sophisticated spyware known to man, so undetectable that tens of thousands of developers and researchers have never even seen a sign of it, and then they use the data for ads so sloppily that anyone can prove they’re listening?
I’m sure Apple just paid 95 mil because they were bored.
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.
I found indisputable proof of this happening.
We were using Google maps, driving in a production van. We were talking about the song “Gasolina” by daddy yankee. The person whose phone it was did not speak Spanish. Moments later we were being served suggestions to stop at “estaciones de gasolina”
That’s not how proof works.
People always talk about getting served ads after they talk about something. I think it’s the other way around. The ads put the thought into your brain and then you start talking about it and notice after you’ve already been thinking about it for a while.
While I do suspect they listen, I have pretty solid (anecdotal) evidence they scan text messages. When I bought my house I had no solicitor, I text my buddy to see who he used and he texted me a response.
Started to type into Google to get a number and it was the top suggested search after 2 chars. Nowhere else did I mention this solicitor, hadn’t heard of them before this, have no other searches for this solicitor. It’s not a big firm, it’s not even in my city - only explanation I have is they scanned the messages.
I don’t think that most of the big tech companies are listening to your microphone (I’m not ruling it out entirely, and I’m certainly there are some smaller sketchier companies that are doing it)
But I think most of the time most of the time they don’t need to
They know what ads you’ve seen on your phone/computer, what you’ve been googling, the websites you’ve visited, where you’ve used your credit card, what shows and movies you watch, and where you’ve been (from gps locations, or from what wifi networks and Bluetooth devices you’ve been near or connected to) and what ads, playlists, stores, products, etc. you were exposed to while you were there, and of course who you talk to and all of that same information about those people.
That’s all going to influence the things you think and talk about, they probably have a pretty good idea what kind of conversations you’re going to have well before you do.
And don’t get me wrong, that’s creepy as fuck.
I think most of it comes down to people not even realizing how much data about ourselves we put out there and all of the ways it can be collected and used to build a profile about you.
And honestly I think they can probably get better data from that most of the time than from trying to filter out background noise and make sense of what you’re talking about through your microphone.
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.
It’s well possible and previously tv mic had been used as bugging device. The problem is, way too many security researchers look in system level software of iOS and even other components of the device that such practice will be too risky for apple (same applies for mainstream android products). Also processing realtime audio, finding potentially unrealiable topic from it and doing realtime ad is actually too much work as of today’s tech (might change sooner than you think though).
What, I think, is more practical is to use the whole query after the wake word to show ad, and potentially use other app tracking data, which is way much reliable than voice for targeting purpose. Voice data is useful for bugging purpose, primarily (ab)used by nation states and LE.
I bet in the medical procedure case mentioned in the blog the user searched/talked about that in other apps and average people aren’t good to notice these privacy leaks.
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?”
They are absolutely listening. This is very easy to test. Speak around a Google or Amazon or Apple device, and start talking about things you would never buy, never need, have never looked up, and is completely irrelevant for your demographic. You’ll get ads anyway.
Listen to the comments to press and congressional testimony very carefully. They always say something like, ‘Facebook is not spying on your microphone.’ They’re always very carefully wording it as the parent company is not listening to your devices. But they absolutely know either one of their subsidiaries or their partners are listening to your microphone, and feeding the data to them.
Ads aren’t why you should be concerned about apps w/ microphone access…
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’m always torn on this topic because, yeah there’s hundreds of biases that can be attributed to this phenominon.
IE something becomes a popular topic in your area. Meaning more people in the area start searching the topic in that area, thus advertisers start pushing it to that location.
Obviously ads are also tracking you in 100 ways on what you’ve searched for, looked at etc… which means it could have a good guess of what you are going to talk about, before you do.
But at the same time, I think everyone can think of a lot of stories of things that just seemed to perfect, to out of the blue. For me the big one was 10 years ago when I walked into an attic, said “man it’s fucking dark up here”, opened my phone, and a big ad for a flashlight app popped up.
not really the same thing but it could happen to anyone: reuters.com/…/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-pr…
Aw jeez not this again.
kadup@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
I used to think the same. I’m all for digital privacy, but listening to a microphone? That’s ridiculous, the legal ramifications would be enormous. Plus, encoding and sending all this data? Not practical, and of course, we are fully aware of confirmation bias and selective memory so for sure those personal anecdotes must be coincidences.
Then it happened to me. I use a VPN, all my devices have a billion types of ad blocking, private DNS, JavaScript disabled by default and so on. Then I mention a product next to my girlfriend, a product that only interested me and I had recently discovered, nothing she was ever aware of… and while I was still right next to her, five minutes later, her phone is showing up ads for said product. Her phone, not mine. The product is not Coca-Cola, it’s not something that often pops up.
What other explanation could there be? The coincidence of the year? They are listening.
Nasan@sopuli.xyz 10 hours ago
The speech recognition software used by digital assistants that come with most modern smartphones would make it trivial to process the audio locally and map the output to your ad profile. Much lighter lift than sending audio recordings.
rowinxavier@lemmy.world 9 hours ago
And a much smaller footprint. It could even be binary data for tweaking your algorithmic profile, say the name of a branded product or in the case of a product with few options just the type of item. Audio runs in the megabytes per minute, transcripts in the kilobytes, but reducing to a conclusion of interest in a single specific item is really very small, hard to notice tbh.