I changed the title from “Spying” to “Eavesdropping” because the article actually directly supports that it is “spying” on you, just not listening.
I occasionally do fun little experiments with others and there phones (with contest) where we find a subject we both have absolutely no interest in, and we figure it out without any electronics at all around, like our back and what not, then we agree to not do anything with our electronics about it at all and only talk to each other about it by our phones, and every fucking time we both start to get add recommendations about whatever we was talking about.
Had a past friend who was asexual and aromantic and never really cared or looked into paternity tests and baby stuff (because like why?) and after a few days of randomly talking about it they got tons of adds targeted for pregnant women (they was trans non binary but was afab)
So from my limited tests, it absolutely does spy on us
clonedhuman@lemmy.world 3 weeks ago
Article littered with affiliate links.
And it also doesn’t make sense.
EmptySlime@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 weeks ago
I think I get what it’s saying? It’s saying that while your phone isn’t directly listening to your conversations in any meaningful way they collect crazy amounts of other data on basically everyone and can piece it together in such a way that they can make some scary accurate guesses as to the kind of ads to serve you based on what their systems have gathered your interests are and where/with whom you spend your time.
I’m not entirely sure. They didn’t really seem to present much more than speculation on it.
deranger@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
This is what I’ve been saying for years. You don’t need to listen to someone’s microphone to serve eerily relevant ads. I’ve heard people commonly discussing how they talked about something and saw an ad for it later. You’re already being tracked everywhere and a bit of confirmation bias is all you need to focus in on the times it works. It’s like that story of the prenatal vitamins being recommended to that woman who didn’t realize she’s pregnant.
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe someone can’t possibly turn on the mic in a targeted attack, but few of us are having conversations that are that important. It’s way easier to target you other ways using data that’s much more available.
Jack_Burton@lemmy.world 2 weeks ago
A while back on Reddit I saw a post asking about this stuff. Companies don’t need to “listen” anymore, they have much more sophisticated options now. This example will use 3 people: A (wife) B (husband) and C (wife’s old friend from school).
The question: A goes to the store without B, and runs into C, who proceeds to tell A about this cool gaming chair he just got. After the conversation, A puts the interaction aside and never mentions it to B. B later gets ads for the gaming chair. If B never had any interaction whatsoever about the chair, and A never even talked about it to B, how does B get the ads?
The answer: A goes to the store, and her phone knows this through location data. The algorithm knows A is at the store, and now picks up that C is also at the same store. The algo then finds a connection through social media that A and C know each other, and maybe even knows spending habits and sees A and C buy similar things. The odds are good that A and C will interact at the store.
C has been searching about this gaming chair for months, has just recently bought it, and talks about it constantly on socials. Odds are good that if A and C interact, C will talk about the chair.
A has no interest in gaming or tech, but B does. The algo knows A and B are married, and B would be interested in the chair C just bought. There is now a vector to send ads from the interaction of A and C directly to B, even though A never mentioned anything about the chair to B, and B has never even met C.
Pheonixdown@lemm.ee 2 weeks ago
See, people say that ad companies can use all this information they gather to better serve targeted advertising, but that’s just not my anecdotal experience.
I get served ads all the time in languages I don’t speak, for VERY specific job related audiences that I’m not even close to related to, state politics that I’ve never lived in, services that I’m already actively subscribed to, just the worst targeting ever.
If I have to get advertised to, I’d so much rather get an ad that could actually be at all relevant to my life, or even some generic ad over the total misses.
Like, if you’re going through the trouble to do all this shady shit to get my data at least be good at it using it…
ddash@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 weeks ago
I mean, what’s the point of collecting all that data if there is no use to it. Why offering you a points program that seemingly gives you free stuff for tracking your purchases if there is no benefit to the company. I’d say unless it’s a hugely incompetent company, they don’t collect so much data on people for no reason whatsoever.
And its been going on for decades with some people having handed in their info to various companies, many if them maybe even connected at some level the different dots on people, for the entire time. And that’s all for nothing so now those companies also need to record you 24/7? Which is an even bigger amount of data to be stored exactly where? Also needs a massive amount of filtering, because really, how meaningful are everyday conversations of people.
fmstrat@lemmy.nowsci.com 2 weeks ago
And it’s almost 2 years old.
zarkanian@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Which part didn’t make sense?