Are your devices listening to you?

We were just talking about what veg to have for tea, then an advert appeared talking about Mary and her parsnip jam.

And Samsung have their own thing that absolutely no-one uses.

Bixby!

*and yes, I don’t use it

They are absolutely monitoring us. For example, they might be able to detect when you are laying on the sofa watching telly, if you have you phone on you – maybe it’s when it’s being used whilst sideways or something – and it could correlate that with when GBBO was on and assume you were watching it. But they aren’t listening to our conversations directly.

On FB by the way it will tell you why it showed you an ad.

However they connect up the dots it’s pretty blatant they are monitoring activities somehow.

Of course they are. And more importantly, the activities of everyone else. Using that data to work out what adverts to deliver to you, based on not just your history but also those of millions of others, will on occasion be absolutely spot on. It’s scary stuff, much more scary than microphone stuff. Working out, for example, that you might be susceptible to a particular kind of political ad, based not on things you’ve said but on things you might be thinking because you are like others… is far more worrying.

Exactly what they did at Cambridge Analytica @kelvin – The Great Hack showed how they manipulated elections in some very, very clever but insidious ways based on the datasets and behavioural science/nudge theory.

Indeed. All made possible by “anonymous spying”, for want of a better term. They don’t know who you are, but they know pretty well what kind of person you are. They don’t need to listen in on your conversations in order to understand you.

I don’t know if this is an Android 12 thing or I just never noticed it before but when an app is using the mic (and you’ve given permissions to allow it) a green mic icon appears top right then minimises itself to a green dot also top right.

I was just saying to my friend the other day how I hadn’t spoken with my sister in a while.

And then the phone rang.

It was my old friend Bob.

Mobiles will be listening all the time, for ‘hey siri/alexa/whatever the windows version is’

Only if it’s turned on. I don’t now, nor have I ever had, as long as I’ve been using smart devices, (which is since the iPhone 3G), had voice command turned on. Friends of mine have a box with Alexa built in – I have to avoid making unseemly comments or sniggering when they try, repeatedly, to get the bloody thing to do something really simple, that I manage to do with a remote control. I’ve never used Siri, I have fingers to tap the bloody screen, I don’t need to talk to a device to get it to do what I want. While I’m 68 this year, I can still manage to walk over eight miles at work, I’m not so infirm that I have to have a machine do what my fingers are still perfectly capable of doing.

I’m not so infirm that I have to have a machine do what my fingers are still perfectly capable of doing.

Damn it now we are all going to get Love Honey Ads.

I’m not so infirm that I have to have a machine do what my fingers are still perfectly capable of doing.

No idea why you’re showing off about not having voice control. It’s handy sometimes, that’s all there is to it. Your status as a human being does not depend on having voice operated stuff or not.

Mobiles will be listening all the time, for ‘hey siri/alexa/whatever the windows version is’

You can disable all this and in iOS on an app by app basis you can select who has access to the microphone. I’ve pretty much barred every app from access to the microphone and camera.

Voice recognition – such easy to use tech

Or even this

NSFW ( very sweary)

I’ve been taking about holidays to Mexico around my phone and Google home speakers for a few years on and off. Never once had an ad or anything about Mexico pop up.

Install Facebook apps and the Mexico ads pop up really quickly.

But it doesn’t seem to acquire this data when accessed through a web browser on an Android phone.

They have all this data, yet can’t work out to stop sending you ads for an item you’ve just bought which is super annoying!

Damn it now we are all going to get Love Honey Ads.

Genuine LOL moment there!

No idea why you’re showing off about not having voice control. It’s handy sometimes, that’s all there is to it. Your status as a human being does not depend on having voice operated stuff or not.

No, it doesn’t, but neither is it enhanced by my having to repeat a number of times a spoken command when I can make the device I’m holding in my hand do it by tapping the screen! I have voice control, I choose not to use it for very clear stated reasons.
The only possible time I can think of when using voice commands would be of use is in the car, but the only command that I can actually think of that would be of any actual use, is “Hey Siri, Shazam this tune” when I’m listening to 6Music on the radio!
I don’t have a smart speaker system, and even if I did, my phone is always right next to me, as is my iPad, why on Earth would I use voice commands to do what the piece of expensive electronics that I’m actually holding in my hand can do just as well? If I’m using satnav, I programme the route in advance, start the car, plug the phone in and the route is there on the screen, again, I have no need to use voice command to do what my fingers are more than capable of.
The corollary of which is that I never have to worry about whether my phone or pad are listening to me, which is the whole point of this thread!

A few years ago my wife and i were watching an Italian show, The Mafia kills only in summer, via an on demand tv app. Every advert break seemed to be for Alfa Romeo. It was driving us nuts (npi). Eventually I shouted at the TV – “not the f-ing Alfa advert again!”

Next day, Facebook was full of Alfa adverts. Was it listening to me? (btw you can turn access to your mic off on your phone).

We decided to test it by making a concerted effort to talk about something we’re not interested in – sailing boats – to see if it would come up on my feed.

… i’ve never seen anything related to sailing boats on my feed.

However, I did watch Italian TV. I’m not convinced anything needs to listen to me, it just x-references everything else I do.
A classic example is the reward cards – all that data on your shopping habits.

My new iPhone is already suggesting which apps i might want to use given the time of day.

… and now i’m getting adverts for a certain Italian car company on this forum.

blocking cookies, running adblocks and not having bluetooth and location on. But the result is i see very few ads

Same number of ads as the rest of us I would have thought, except you don’t get adverts for handlebars and cycling events, you get them for cosmetic beauty products and club18 holidays to Ibiza.

Although no doubt you will be less engaged so you probably notice them less.

Same number of ads as the rest of us I would have thought,

I doubt it very much.  the adblocker removes most.  I get none on facebook for weeks then a flurry of them then none for weeks for example as the algorithms fight it out.  I get none on the guardian website or other newspaper sites  I get none of flickr just a blank page, I get none on youtube etc etc

FB on my Missus phone is most definitely spying on her (and by extension the rest of the family), and she never seems to close apps properly. Lots of instances of targeted ads after a single comment…

The thing that concerns me is, what do they do with the gathered intel that doesn’t just result in a simple advert? How detailed is the profile assembled for each of us and what ultimate use could/will be made of it?

To be clear we’re talking about tech companies here, not some shodowy arm of government. The trouble with “disruptors” is that they see breaking the rules in the name of progress as a badge of honour…

You can disable all this and in iOS on an app by app basis you can select who has access to the microphone.

Same on Android.

FB on my Missus phone is most definitely spying on her (and by extension the rest of the family), and she never seems to close apps properly. Lots of instances of targeted ads after a single comment…

It’s not, it’s a coincidence but if you want to you can remove voice permissions for it. Try an experiment and start talking about say, scuba diving holidays.

They have all this data, yet can’t work out to stop sending you ads for an item you’ve just bought which is super annoying!

They know you’ve just bought it. They also know advertising something to you after you’ve bought it can make you feel more positive about your purchase, and then you’re more likely to talk highly of it or recommend it to someone else. Advertisers don’t just pay for ads and hope; they evaluate how much impact their spend has and won’t spend on the same thing again if it’s not delivering benefits. They aren’t stupid

why on Earth would I use voice commands to do what the piece of expensive electronics that I’m actually holding in my hand can do just as well?

You don’t, you use voice control when you don’t have the thing in your hand. Or when it’s a faff. For example I can get up and leave the kitchen with my hands full whilst saying ‘Alexa lights off’ and it’s quicker than fumbling for a switch. Or I can dim the lights from the sofa by saying ‘lights to 50%’ and it’s faster than going over to the switches or finding and unlocking my phone, opening the Hue app, navigating to the room in question and configuring the lights manually.

Then there’s other stuff like making announcements that it’s dinnertime or asking the kids ti being their laundry down without having to shout or walk up two flights of stairs and closed doors. And even asking for the time when your phone is in the other side of the room.

I’m not saying everyone should get it but don’t assume everyone is a techno fashion victim just because you personally haven’t seen any benefit.

‘Alexa lights off’ and it’s quicker than fumbling for a switch.

If it understands your accent!

Yes, absoloutely. and as previously mentioned probably much more. mobiles know where you are, who you are with, where you shop, what your patterns are.
Im pretty sure they know not only where youve been on the web, but how long youve lingered over sections of a page, what is of interest and what isnt.

Question is, do you care?

Ultimatly they are feeding you adverts that are of interest to you, rather than totally at random.
Winner for the advertisers, and a winner for you, surely?
would you rather get adverts letting you know of a sale on that bike part youve been pondering, or for some random generic guff you have no interest in whatsoever?

The only thing putting me off using “Hey Google”, is the “Hey” part.

Makes me feel like a right doofus, talking to myself.

I realise they couldnt just use “Google” (A la; “Computer, Earl Grey, Hot”), but it would be more comfortable in my mind.

I dont think you can set your own trigger words, as it has to be hard wired into the device.

I doubt it very much. the adblocker removes most

Adblocker is superb – very rarely see any ads at all…

Also running NoScipt, it blocks all the advertising and data gathering domains from running anything….

Try an experiment and start talking about say, scuba diving holidays.

I’d suggest you might need to pick a different topic than that one – because there’s so much user tracking crap built in this site that the Ad companies will almost certainly know you looked at a page with the words scuba diving holidays on it. But you could certainly pick some weird topic, write it on a piece of paper and agree with your wife to discuss it regularly for a week but commit that neither of you will search it etc and see if either of you get adverts for it. To make sure its a fair test – you’d want to pick something that is likely to have plenty of advertisers (so diving holidays is a good example) but also nothing that might produce a false positive because friends etc search for it (in that sense assuming you are a typical middle-class MTB rider diving holidays might be bad!). And of course no scientific experiment is particularly meaningful without replicates – so try it three times a week apart and see how you get on… Really a proper study should have a control group too – so perhaps you need to ask someone (out of earshot of devices, and not using text etc) so watch their own ad traffic for the same “topics” but NOT to discuss with anyone in their household (e.g. I frequently see ads on this site for equine stuff even though I’ve never ridden a horse in my life, and nobody in my family has been searching for that sort of stuff – so probably the advertiser has a broad brush promote to middle-class outdoorsy people policy).

I’d add that if you then want to work out where your ads are coming from why not take one of the non-topics that you used the week before and do some very quick search/research on it. I’ll be surprised is you don’t see ads, but also if your wife doesn’t see the odd add for things you’ve searched for (at least on the same Wifi connection – but it might be smarter than that).

Listening, Watching.

Taking notes.

By default people seem to think they should worry about this, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

I am going to see adverts, I always have. On TV, on buses, in magazines. Nowadays I also see adverts on Socials media, in Prime, etc etc. If I am going to be presented with Ads, I would rather they are targeted, then at least they are more likely to be be of interest.

If my smart speakers or phones listen to me, I really don’t care. If I did, I would just not use them or turn them off.

I’d love to see the Venn diagram of people who think phones are listening because they don’t understand how clever big tech is but also think that big tech is too big and powerful.

Having voice controlled stuff in our house means we don’t have to have our phones next to us all the time which is proving a much better household experience.

The only thing putting me off using “Hey Google”, is the “Hey” part.

You have a couple of options. I use “OK Google” in the car.

You’re right to be paranoid. A close friend wrote algorithms that go into smart meters and said they are specifically designed to deduce what appliances you are using when.

A close friend wrote algorithms that go into smart meters and said they are specifically designed to deduce what appliances you are using when.

I’ve had one of those for years, it’s pretty poor at guessing what the load is..

I ended up chatting to the developers as it didn’t spot the kettle (which should be easy 3 kW load for a minute or two) – it kept getting flagged as the Oven. They were in the US and couldn’t comprehend you could have a 3 kW kettle, hence they miss-classified it as they don’t have decent kettles (probably being on 110v doesn’t help).

Neurio Energy By Appliance by Ben Freeman[/url], on Flickr

Although why you should be worried about it working out that people switch on ovens in the evening and kettles in the morning – it’s hardly revolutionary stuff. They’re not going to be able to work out which light bulb or laptop you switched on.

By default people seem to think they should worry about this, it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Its not so much the commercial ads tho they are highly irritating – its the other use the data can be put to.  Cambridge analytica data used in elections anyone?  Who knows what other use this huge amount of data can be used for?