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Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
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Who didn't know this?
"Yeah, me and my wife were talking about a new driveway, the next we knew we were both getting ads for driveway paving companies. The news says it's just a coincidence..."
However: https://m.independent.ie/business/technology/your-phone-isnt-listening-to-you-but-the-truth-is-scarier/42345949.html
Bullshit.
Useful response, well done.
My wife and I were driving down the highway and I saw an old Cadillac, and I said, “hey, I like that old Cadillac.” Not even an hour later I got a facebook marketplace notification about a Cadillac for sale near me. I have NEVER searched for Cadillacs for sale.
Yeah, crazy thing is it's never things I just think about but never tell anyone. Ads don't come until I mention it out loud near my phone.
I've had things like this happen, and I always suspected it was Facebook itself doing it, but now I think it's also likely its something else feeding info into an ad system that then shows the ad on Facebook.
Every now and then I'll just blurt out random things I want that I'd never want to see if I can trigger getting ads for it. Hasn't happened in quite awhile now, probably because restrictions on doing it are getting better.
All of the discourse around "we can't prove they are listening" feels like gaslighting, to me.
I don't need proof. We have all have had this experience, and "it's just tracking absolutely everything else so well that it guesses really accurately" isn't in any way better, anyway.
It isn’t better, it’s even worse IMO. But it’s just the truth. It is verifiable enough that apps cannot just spy via your microphone in any reasonably modern OS, not even the old versions. What has never been verified though is that there are non-zero-day-exploit-ways to spy through your microphone.
It can be proven, very easily. All it takes is a little bit of IT skills and a basic understanding of networking. There are also immense amounts of incentive to prove it. Your information would be spread across every news network, and you'd be able to use it to sue any business that does it.
So, the only reason it can't be proven is because it's not happening.
Oh, I wish that were so.
Any data breaches in the news, today? Of course there is..
The odds are good that whenever you (or anyone) read this comment, there's a verified data breach that hit the news this week and isn't getting any serious national coverage, or any television coverage at all. Even odds are that it's actually from today, regardless of when someone reads this.
I don't know what your pocketbooks look like, but I don't have the finances to hold any of these companies accountable.
I do have a half-dozen different legal settlements worth of (3 years each of) identity fraud protection service offers.
Edit: Oh, you maybe mean specifically if a voice recording was leaked. If so, you're right, that would be huge news.
My legal recourse would remain exactly what it currently is, though. Three more years of low quality identify theft insurance.
Data breaches are already commonplace, though. People don't really care about that, so news outlets don't care to cover it.
This is vastly different and would be a new thing that everyone would be interested in hearing about. So many people think that this is happening, but have no proof. They would love to be able to say "See! There's finally proof! I told everyone!"
The news should have called it Confirmation Bias.
No, it's should be called just plain "Confirmation." Anyone not a complete idiot has known this has been going on.
People are dumb enough to put Amazon Echos and the Google thing I can't remember the name of in their homes. Even smartphones spy. If it's listening for "Cue Words," it's listening all the time.
Can’t say about Amazon and Google because I don’t have their devices, but if you read up on how Siri’s cue word works, you’ll see how it doesn’t “listen” to you all the time. It has 2 mechanisms in play, one that’s always ready to hear you call it, and the other that actually transmits the data it collects. Those 2 are decoupled to ensure the one waiting for the trigger/cue word is isolated and only works locally and does not collect or transmit what it’s hearing. Once you trigger it, the second mechanism comes in and then it’s fair game as whatever it hears can be collected and shared.
Having your phone listen to you all the time and transmit the info will cause an obvious drain on your battery and data. If that truly was the case, mobile security professionals would’ve sounded the alarm by now.
Bro, they don’t. The OS manages microphone access. If you allow it, yes, they may spy. But even then, the OS visible tells you via an icon that the microphone is used. It is the plain written truth, that we can not argue around. There has been a lot security research around this, stuff has been audited, Android is even open source, and no one has ever found even a hint of this being possible.
Echos and Google Homes are an entirely different story because they operate their microphones by design, their entire system works on always listening, and they don’t hide that.
Yeah, they actually do. But keep dickriding for a corporation that couldn't care less if you, or anyone else, lives or dies.
Unless you work for them...
Do you have a mechanism to work around the OS permissions model that broadly works across handsets?
I can find you a buyer for that info and we'll split 40/60. Dead serious. Cash, and no questions. Just prove that it works.
Yeah, I do:
Don't buy the fucking things.