Like, we all know they're listening , but can we provide proof?

My friend was complaining about all the new super surveillance that will be government required in cars after 2027, and I said to him dude you have a stock android, you use every AI slop feature, you use a smart TV on your unsecured network, and uses x every day. They have everything they could possibly need on him. Oh and he posts questionable things to fb daily under his real name.

Samsung TV's have an ai assistant:
https://news.samsung.com/global/samsung-redefines-ai-search-on-smart-tvs-with-a-smarter-bixby-voice-assistant

Samsung Ai assistant privacy policy:
https://d264isyiyrfhr3.cloudfront.net/storage/tos/usa/2.1.3/1765237389944/eng/usa_eng_pp.html

Other Samsung Scandals if the above wasn't enough:
https://cybernews.com/privacy/samsung-settles-lawsuit-collecting-texans-tv-data/

My Samsung TV is not on the WiFi and I have AdGuard running network-wide because of shit like this.

You could take extreme measures like Louis Rossmann has said he does to his phones.

He said he disassembles his phones and desolders and removes all the microphones. He said if he wants to make or receive a call, he'll use his Bluetooth headset or earpiece.

I don't see why the same can't also be feasible for televisions either, aside from how difficult they can be to properly disassemble and service.

I mean graphene would be easier for phones.

Theoretically if you never hook a smart TV to the net it shouldn't be able to spy. I'm sure they do tho

https://www.howtogeek.com/you-can-still-buy-a-dumb-tv-but-should-you/
This article outlines the situation really well. your two options to not be spied on out of the box are to buy a terrible TV or to buy a commercial one. They dont make "dumb tvs" anymore. I wonder if theres a way to implement one's own firmware n all that to turn a nice samsung into something more private.

if he wants to make or receive a call, he'll use his Bluetooth headset or earpiece.

Oh boy he should not look up how insecure Bluetooth is then

Graphene is still only for Pixel phones right now isn't it? I heard something about them working to expand out to other model phones eventually, wonder how that's going and how many more devices it'll eventually support? 🤔

Eh, it entirely depends on your threat model. If you're trying to protect against mass surveillance, it makes sense because you'll only sometimes have a functional microphone powered on. If you're trying to protect against a targeted attack against you specifically, then yeah Bluetooth had some problems. You have bigger issues at that point, though. I also think Bluetooth is probably more secure than you think.

Only pixel yes and google is working hard to kill it.

They announced last week their partnership is with Motorola. I'll keep using my pixel and see what they roll out and let them work the bugs out of it for a bit first.

I heard older versions of Android running on older smart TVs can be overwritten with Linux but once it's updated past a certain 2023 threshold that option is closed.

Anecdotal, but I was on a Boy Scout trip as a chaperone where us parents were talking to each other in person about where we'd take our first break en route to the campsite. We decided on a Burger King at one of the towns along the route (it being a small town, the only one there). My phone was in my pocket at the time, powered on but black screen idle.

I got back into my car and pulled up Google Maps. As I typed in the words Burger King, it auto completed with the one we were just talking about that was half a state away in that town. It didn't pull up the closest one to me, which I would have expected it to do.

Freaked me out.

Okay, so here is my story:

I was on holiday with my friends and we were playing a TTRPG. In the RPG our group needed charol tablets. I have never in my life googled or needed something like that.

After the session, I opened up Amazon to buy something I forget to pack and voilà: Amazon suggested me to buy charol tablets.

My smartphone must have listened in and given that data to Amazon.

No Alexa or similar products were in the vacation home.

I and everyone I know have similar stories. They are listening

That one could be attributed to shitty programming. Still.

Just think about the scale of the surveillance: every smartphone user is being monitored 24/7 in hope to find something to sell them.

If you hate AI because it wastes so much energy, think about the cost for the this: Energy, water, battery life, bandwidth, ...
And in contrast to AI the 'users' don't get anything in return.

I worry that you're making AI out as the good option, but really they are both awful, AI is simply less mature. There hasn't yet been time to inject ads into generated responses (but it's coming), and the users don't yet feel the surveillance of each of their prompts.

And are you saying users don't get any functionality from their smartphones? I find my smartphone more helpful than an LLM that spits out statistically likely responses while destroying our water, air, and electricity prices; stealing intellectual property from small artists who can't fight back; and removing the humanity in peoples' interactions.

Aside from devices that acknowledge theyre listening all the time there actually isnt any, for undisclosed data collection via microphone specifically. Research has, to my knowledge, never found that to be the case

Researchers have generally explained that they dont need to listen to what you say with a microphone- they collect so much data about you they can accurately model what you're likely to have any interest in, and when that happens frequently enough confirmation bias takes over.

That being said, yes, that person is having all of their data collected, by meta directly and through cookies tracking them around the web. By google and android. By ai, and other companies. By the tracking images in the emails they open. Etc. Theres lots of evidence for all of those things

And there is evidence for companies having collected data that people didnt concent to, like when google tracked location data that people opted out of sharing (there was a lawsuit) or meta recently ended up in the news for circumventing the sandboxing around the Facebook app to collect mobile web activity in a way they're not supposed to be able to.

It's still never been proven despite countless very smart people looking for this exact behaviour for well over a decade now. The first person to actually prove this whole mass spying via microphone to sell ads thing is actually happening, would be world-famous overnight.

For instance on an android phone, it's not really possible for an app to do something that a determined enough security researcher couldn't ultimately detect if they were looking for it. When you can build your own version of the operating system and decompile the application easily, there's not really any other places to hide that won't give something away.

If you feel like your phone is acting off of a conversation you had without interacting with it, it's nearly always one of these three:

• The vast majority of people are super predictable most of the time.
• You are not accounting for other people in the conversation, who may well have just googled the thing. These companies know who you spend time with, they don't need a microphone for that.
• Baader meinhof phenomenon

Don't get me wrong, I've thought surely something fishy was going on plenty of times, but the reality is, until someone can actually prove it (which is entirely possible to do if it's happening), it's gotta just be the above. We're being tracked a crazy amount, but it's not passively by microphones in our pockets

Note: none of this applies if you're actually being specifically individually targeted (i.e. by a hostile government). All bets are off in that instance

Just another reason they want to build even more data centers!

AI capacity isn’t being built to serve users. It’s being used to profile their histories, to unmask their anonymity online so their profiles can be made more accurate.

Why do you think they want everything stored in the cloud? For convenience?

Phones no one has proven it which I wouldn't be hard. TV's definitely do they even can tell what your watching from the video on the screen. I find it funny one is proven one is not but both believed.

Conformation bias. You think of something and you see more of it. You don't realize the 1000's of other times you have seen that. Do you honestly remember every add you ever see? No but when you have thought about something you are more likely to see more of it. Or do people purchase more or your colour or type of car after you get it? Or is the fact you see more of them more likely because you are now "looking" for them.

Then explain to me why nobody has ever proven the phone thing. But they have proven the TV thing and other forms of tracking. Every one is in on the phone industry so they keep it hush. I mean it wouldn't even be that hard to do. Airplane mode and WiFi. Or fake cell tower and faraday box.

What sending postcards in the mail. Yah loran wan sure but who actually has that in density enough.

The thing I find so funny about all of this is that people would rather believe that their phone is spying on them with the Mic that there is no proof of. Then what is more likely the truth you are not as unique as you think you are and they have so much data on you they have no reason to spy on what you say because they know you better then you know yourself (we lie to ourselves).
But yes it is easier for people to believe the mic is spying on them because thy can't or won't accept the more likely option.

There's no need for uploading a constant audio feed or transcript (something that would be easy for researchers to detect in the network logs) to show you an advertisement like that.

Your phone knows all the things you wrote in the post, namely: your location, that you are physically with those friends, the wifi network, the search history of everyone there. Because of all that metadata, advertisers probably know you were playing a TTRPG, maybe even the specific one

Knowing what you're watching on the screen is different than what you're saying out loud near the TV or remote. Plus almost all TVs can run without an internet connection too, which renders this concern somewhat null

Disagree. The fact that these devices are both capable of, and would actively, emphatically, attempt to do any level of data harvesting, is a problem. Can they be defeated? Yes. They should not have to be. We deserve better.

The first person to actually prove this whole mass spying via microphone to sell ads thing is actually happening, would be world-famous overnight.

The first person that proves that Google, Microsoft, Amazon or Meta are directly doing it, using their hardware vendors privilege - would be famous overnight.

But that won't happen, because they don't have to.

(Okay, it might still happen with Meta. I'm not sure
those jackasses have any self respect.)

In general, the big vendors don't need to listen to anyone's microphone, because the average user installs a free flappy bird clone that runs the microphone continuously, and then sells that to absolutely every single limited liability corporation, coffee shop, or data broker - to correlate for advertising.

Saying "they're not using the microphone" is splitting hairs to death.

Yes, a few of the biggest players can't be arsed to directly use the microphone.

Instead they buy the result of malware microphone use indirectly from the malware pushers who do absolutely use the microphone.

Absolutely every tech company, employer and three letter agency is buying the content of your voice recordings through a form of Privacy Washing. They didn't collect it themselves, and they didn't look to closely at how it was collected, so it's okay, right?

For the average user, whose kid installed some stupid little free games, yes, someone is almost certainly "listening" right now, and all the time.

But they're not using it to decide who to arrest, who to deport, or who to hire or fire (for saying "union"), or whether you really need the salary you requested...unless they are.

And yes, finding out some of that would absolutely make the news, but those are harder to find out, and could go for decades undiscovered.

Aside from devices that acknowledge theyre listening all the time there actually isnt any, for undisclosed data collection via microphone specifically. Research has, to my knowledge, never found that to be the case

Please stop quoting this misinformation.

Microphone hijacking is real, and it is common. The average user has been a victitm of it.

And in addition, Google and Apple effectively admitted to microphone abuse in court.

Here's court cases lost by Google and Apple

Also, whenever monolithic megacorporations not recording you directly, virtually everyone is still buying any data about you they can get from actual malware distributing criminals.

Microphone hijacking is real and commonplace. (Edit: Fixed link thanks to some feedback.)

The malware vendors sell what they learn about us on black markets. And in net effect, everyone is buying from them.

They "Privacy Wash" the things they learn from the illegal recordings, by passing them from one disreputable broker to another. Each broker can keep poor quality records of exactly where they got their data. Pretty soon it's just "part of your digital fingerprint" and "can't be helped".

don't need any such "proof". the whole industry has lost any and all benefit-of-doubt privileges, for ever. they don't get an opportunity to gain a foothold in mi casa and possibly be in a position to do harm.

I don't get the idea that after all the shit they pulled someone's like "well maybe this new thing's nice".

those are immoral people with zero compunctions about doing anything that hurts you, your community, and humanity as a whole. we are in an adversarial position and you'd do well to remind yourself of that constantly.

No, I am not a AI fanboy. I just compared bad to worse.

Of course users get something from their smartphones, but not from the spyware on it. The spyware is not an integral function of a smartphone.

Apparently the lie I craft for myself is so good it went to medical school because I've been getting spam addressed to Dr Me asking about my oncology clinic for years

I normally have GPS and Bluetooth disabled, so my position would have to be guessed based on cell towers. We were not even on the same WLAN (because the WLAN was down in the vacation home, much to our dissatisfaction).

While I can't rule out somebody in our group stealthily googling the tablets, phones while playing is generally frowned upon.

So yeah, being on the same cell tower as someone I know who might have searched for it might be the only other explanation.

The adventure itself didn't have anything to do with the tablets, that was just our group doing strange stuff, like always.

The manufacturers tell you.

And they even make you click the "I have read and understood this" button under the document that explicitly states that they're spying on you and selling all your data.

Thanks for providing links but I don't trust the ny post.

Here's a story where people working for Apple got access to audio recorded during seemingly unwanted times like during sex.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2019/jul/26/apple-contractors-regularly-hear-confidential-details-on-siri-recordings

But I imagine these people were enabling voice recording in the first place. I trust my phone not to record if I disable those features (though sometimes they make this difficult).

I think Apple is generally better about this stuff then other companies though? Since they actually went to court to protect e2e encryption.

Lastly, if youre someone of interest to powerfull people, there are otherways they can use your phone against you like with pegasus:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pegasus_(spyware)

Pre-tech, God and/or your conscience was always watching and listening. Now others are watching and listening too.

Yeah, but that malware flappy bird clone does need to ask for the microphone permission, and the clueless user does need to click agree, that yes they want Free Flappy Bird 100% Legit Pro to have access to their microphone. Yes it happens. But that's not what people mean they say that you should use a flip phone and get the battery out when you are not using it otherwise it's listening to you. No it's not listening to you unless you explicitly gave an app permission to listen to you.

Exactly, you see thousands of irrelevant ads every day and think nothing of it, then when 1 time an ad gets lucky, you will use it as proof "they are listening" forever after.

I had the same thing happen with billboards. I learned about some new thing I have never heard about before, and wouldn't you know it shortly after I saw a billboard selling it. The ad companies must be on top of their game, they are nor only listening to everything I say, they can print and install a whole billboard on the side of a building within minutes just before I go here.

Did they? I read the article and the conclusion is they got fined but didn't admit to anything, nor was any proof shown that they did anything. The whole thing was about Siri getting activated by ambient noise.

If you’re worried about the guy 10 m away from you eavesdropping, BT is not a great option. If you’re worried about the hackers on the other side of the planet, BT should be fine.

Puedo yo poner in foothold en tu casa?

No it's not listening to you unless you explicitly gave an app permission to listen to you.

Is worth highlighting. Good point.

The very notion of proof implies that you can reproduce it. So I would suggest you forget what anybody here or elsewhere said. Instead, you :

• get a cheap phone (so typically Android)
• reset/format/flash it to a blank state
• make a new testing account on it
• use for random browsing, using app, etc and you log your history, namely what did you actually do AND what ads you actually see
• test for something outside of your new habits with a search query, then log and compare again, seeing the threshold to change
• repeat the last step for something said using e.g. a voice assistant, log&compare
• repeat WITHOUT explicit search, log&compare

Yes this takes a of time but that will help you make YOUR own opinion on the matter if you genuinely care.

the English would be un pie, and you can drop the yo :)

Oh, no the preocupes, el uso de foothold aquí fue una elección artística

I don’t get the idea that after all the shit they pulled someone’s like “well maybe this new thing’s nice”.

I look at my friends who do this even though I advize them not to. For them, data is invisible and out of sight, out of mind. Their TV is a consumer device like IDK a toaster or washing machien. They put it online with no real thought to data or privacy. From their perspective this is normal. Their neighbors all do it with their TVs. Their friends all do it! I am the only one who makes a warning to them. Everyone else they know does it. Who wouldn't want a "smart" TV???

They don't understand tech very well and they feel like what they see most people doing must be good. They are not thinking about the eroding effect on their whole society from normalizing dragnet surveillance and total privacy loss. It's too abstract, and the allure of the shiny is too much.

Theoretically if you never hook a smart TV to the net it shouldn’t be able to spy.

I think you are right (today!), but look what happens with cars... the car connects to a wireless network without asking you, to send back telemetry. The cost of doing that is coming down all the time, and there is a big juicy profit stream just waiting to be harvested. I will not be surprised if we see TVs do this eventually, like cars do already.

They could also be designed to simply refuse to function if they can't connect. I didn't hear about any like this so far, but it feels like a matter of time. Enshittification comes for everything.