this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Privacy
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the phone's processor has the wake up word hardcoded, so it's not like an ad company can add a new one on a whim. and it uses passive listening, so it's not recording everything you say - I've seen it compared to sitting in a class and not paying attention until the teacher says your name.
Have you seen this code though? Every time I hear a statement like that, I have to wonder if you're all just taking their word for it.
I don't take their word for it, unless they show me that code and prove that it is the code running on all the devices in use.
Do you also personally audit all open source software that you use?
Your rebuttal makes no sense.
The issue with proprietary "smart" assistants is that we can only guess how they work.
Okay so that's a no, then, thanks!
No but I do review code audits that certified professionals publish for things that I use when they are available, and I also don't use any voice assistants and only use open source smartphone ROMs such as GrapheneOS.
Basically I use the opsec methods available to me to prevent as much of the rampant spying that I can. The last thing I would do is put an open mic to Amazon's audio harvesting bots in my home because that's incredibly careless.
That's what I figured!
Thanks for the reply.
There's no way that an app with mic permissions could basically do the same thing and pick up on certain preprogrammed words like Ford or Coke which could then be parsed by AI and used by advertisers? It certainly seems like that isn't out of the realm of physical possibility but I'm definitely no expert. Would they have had to pay the OS maker to hardcode it in to the OS? Could that be done in an update at a later time?
only if you want the phone to start burning battery and data while displaying the "microphone in use" indicator all the time.
not to mention that the specific phrases have been picked in order to cause as few false positives as possible (which is why you can't change them yourself), and you can still fool Google Assistant by saying "hey booboo" or "okay boomer". good luck with making it reliably recognize "Ford", lol.
Huh, TIL. I figured "if they can do it with one thing they could do it with more than one thing."