Thefreethoughtproject: While social media companies have spent years denying that their apps are recording your private conversations, the truth is finally coming out.
John Vibes:
Over the years, smartphone users have become increasingly suspicious that their devices are listening to them in order to feed them advertisements and “enhance their experience” in third-party applications. Companies like Facebook have consistently denied these claims, saying that targeted ads and messages are just a coincidence and that the data for these services is received in other ways.
However, earlier this year, during the Cambridge Analytica scandal, we began to see some of the first hints that our phones were indeed bugging us.
Cambridge Analytica whistle-blower Christopher Wiley says they probably listen all the time. Speaking before the UK Parliament, Wylie said, “There are different modes that they use and can only be useful when you are in the office, or you’re on the street, or watching TV, but which one do you have now?”
Since that scandal, experts who have explored this possibility have begun to reveal surprising details.
In a recent interview with Vice, Dr. Peter Hannay, senior security consultant at major cybersecurity firm Asterisk, explained how third-party apps use a loophole to collect voice data from your phone.
Hannay said that while your microphone is on, your voice data is sent to other parties if you say specific trigger words like “Hey Siri” or “OK Facebook,” which is a catch. Third-party applications often request voice access in their user agreements to “enhance the experience” of their products.
Promotional video:
“From time to time, snippets of audio come back to [other applications], but there is no official understanding of what these triggers are. Regardless of whether it is used during sync or based on location, or using certain features, [apps] will certainly get these microphone permissions and use them periodically. All internal applications send this data encrypted, so it is very difficult to determine the exact trigger,”said Hanney.
While this process is becoming more evident every day, many tech companies continue to deny that they are engaging in this practice, and since all outgoing information is encrypted, it is impossible to pinpoint exactly what information they receive and how they use it.
“As we have seen recently, a number of companies are already talking openly about this, and I am sure other companies are doing the same. In fact, there is no reason why this would not be the case. It makes sense from a marketing standpoint, and their end user agreements and law allow it, so I'm sure they do it, but there is no way to prove it.”Hannay added.
Vice journalists then conducted their own experiment, saying random phrases on their phones, and then saw ads related to those phrases in their news feeds. You can try this experiment at home, and it is very likely that you already got these results by accident and were very surprised.
I experienced something similar in April when a friend came to visit me from the west coast. I picked him up from Baltimore Washington Airport and while talking about his flight, he told me that he had a stopover in Charlotte, North Carolina and mentioned that they have a good airport.
The next morning I woke up with these messages on my phone:
Strange but I have never been to Charlotte, North Carolina, I have never thought about this place and I have never written anything about this place. But of course, after talking to a friend about the airport in Charlotte, my phone thought I was interested.
At the moment, there is no way to avoid this espionage other than being extremely careful with the apps you sign up - or ditch your cell phone altogether, which can be counterproductive if you're using it for business.