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In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention (futurism.com)

submitted 2 months ago by return2ozma@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] oweka@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 months ago

For everyone saying apps need permission to use your mic I want to point you to "play services". The permissions protections only apply to user space apps not system apps. Thats how u can say "OK google" and get the chat ai to pop up even tho its "not listening" according to the OS.

Also if you read the website they are not piping audio to their servers. They push triggers (keywords, etc) to the local ai on your phone that listens for things like "OK google" and then sends those reports back.

Meta apps would need permission to to mic but I think if y'all check your big tech apps u will be surprised how many have that permission.

I can't speak to iOS because its closed source but it probably has similar backdoors for apple.