this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
322 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

59468 readers
4927 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
322
Cox deletes ‘Active Listening’ ad pitch after boasting that it eavesdrops though our phones (www.fastcompany.com)
submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology
65 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Cox deletes ‘Active Listening’ ad pitch after boasting that it eavesdrops though our phones::undefined

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (2 children)

The spying that's openly admitted in terms and conditions should be alarming enough — if anyone actually read and understood all the legalese. Consider this: https://time.com/5568815/amazon-workers-listen-to-alexa/

I've seen Android phones activate Google Assistant seemingly at random many many many times. They're only supposed to activate when called by a specific phrase like "okay Google", but there are plenty of false positives, and every time that happens, an audio recording gets sent to Google. Same deal with Alexa and Siri. This is, of course, allowed by the terms and conditions.

At least Android makes it visible to the user when this happens. I wouldn't bet on smart TVs doing the same.

At this point there's not much you can do about it. Even if I secure my own devices and my own home network, that all goes out the window the second anyone else walks in my door with their own smartphone.

That said, I agree that the claim is likely false with third-party apps on modern smartphones from major brands. It's not easy for background activities to access the camera or microphone without the user's knowledge on iOS or Android. First-party and second-party spying is hard to avoid, though.

[–] t3rminus 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Except Siri processing is actually done on your device, as of iOS 15. Which kind of blew my mind when it was announced.

Nothing is sent to Apple unless you request an online service (such as weather, maps, etc.) or unless you allow your recordings to be sent.

Try it: in airplane mode on an iOS 15 device: Siri still works at a basic level. Language processing happens locally.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Thanks for the correction. More details here: https://www.macrumors.com/guide/ios-15-siri/

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

They’re only supposed to activate when called by a specific phrase like “okay Google”, but there are plenty of false positives, and every time that happens, an audio recording gets sent to Google.

And you can even do Google takeout and see all the recordings they took of you. Many of which you'll notice doesn't have you asking or doing anything remotely related to a voice search.