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.

  • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
    7·
    13 hours ago

    I saw proof one day. I was visiting a welding shop on business, never been there before, didn’t know them. At some point, I’m sitting in the office with about five guys, distracting them from their work, yakking, and I mention a big piece of gear I have to haul around using a cart. One suggests a different kind of cart, and describes it. As we’re talking, one of the other guys gasps, and holds his phone up to show the boss.

    While we were talking, this guy opened his phone, and the first ad that popped up was for that odd, obscure equipment cart that we had just been talking about.

    It turned out that these guys had been discussing this subject earlier, and now it was confirmed for all of us.

    • Art3mis@lemmy.world
      6·
      13 hours ago

      The fun part is that they dnt even need to listen for this. They track everything you search, link it to your phones ip, number, and location. But it doesnt stop there. They know people will talk to the people they are around.

      So if person A searches something 2 days ago and then goes to hang out with person B who has similar interests, they will serve ads about those products to person B because they figure it will be relevant at some point. Basically, the prediction software is so good that it comes off as listening to every word you said.

      They are def also listening, but this is more often what is happening. Use a vpn and privacy focused browser and you will notice the relevance of ads drop significantly

      • Neverbeaten@lemmy.world
        3·
        12 hours ago

        What ads? My browser blocks ads. My vpn blocks ads. I pay for email so don’t see ads there. I pay for search so I don’t see ads there, either. I self host media. My TV doesn’t connect to the internet.

        I seriously never see ads.

        • knee@lemmy.ml
          2·
          4 hours ago

          👍 Well done there. Using Brave, DDG, Ecosia and Firefox. Got Mulvad, got Tuta. Pay for search? Who with? Moving towards self hosting. Just ditched internet on my TV.

        • Art3mis@lemmy.world
          2·
          10 hours ago

          Yes. This suggestion is for folks that are tired of constant ads. Not folks that are already doing what i just suggested lol

    • MIDItheKID@lemmy.world
      41·
      12 hours ago

      The one that did it for me - I was in the car with my wife and a friend. We were driving down the highway and talking about the clouds we saw. And I said “I wander what kind of clouds those are. Like cumulus? Alto?”

      The I take out my phone and type “types of” and the first auto-fill option that came up was “types of cloud” and I was like “there’s no fucking way that just happens to be the highest suggested search prompt”

      • BarneyPiccolo@lemmy.today
        31·
        11 hours ago

        It won’t be long before we’ll be getting into sexy time with the spouse, and the phone on the nightstand dings with a notification. You pause to check it, and it’s an ad for a new sex lube!

  • CerebralHawks@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    11·
    11 hours ago

    It’s not logically sound, but at this point the burden of proof needs to be on Big Tech if they want to claim they’re not spying. Otherwise we’d have to prove it for each individual model, and that isn’t feasible, and only supports the opposition.

    • kutt@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 hours ago

      This isn’t a proof of mass surveillance. He’s one of the most famous people on earth and he’s probably the target of many hackers.

    • FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      1 day ago

      He also gave his famous opinion about Facebook users. Deep down, he agrees with privacy advocates. The diff is that he’s a shitty enough person to take advantage of the less techy people out there even if his society will be damaged badly in the process. Most of us are not that shitty.

      they trust me

      dumb fucks

      I think we can move beyond Facebook here. Trusting big tech with your data never works out well.

  • Pommes_für_dein_Balg@feddit.org
    34·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • utopiah@lemmy.ml
    183·
    2 days ago

    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.

  • meathorse@lemmy.world
    61·
    1 day ago

    Think of something you’ve never mentioned or discussed before, then out of nowhere, start having a conversation with a friend about it, how much you like it and are thinking about getting it, taking lessons etc then see what happens over the next week on either your or your friend’s ads (turn off ad blocker if you use one).

    I recommend something completely unusual for most people like an instrument (didgeridoo or cowbell)

  • glitching@lemmy.ml
    29·
    2 days ago

    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.

    • FineCoatMummy@sh.itjust.works
      61·
      1 day ago

      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.

    • frozenspinach@lemmy.mlEnglish
      33·
      1 day ago

      don’t need any such “proof”

      I’m gonna stop you there. I’m okay with no benefit of the doubt in terms of them being bad actors, but your worldview still has to be built at the bones and joints out of things known to be true otherwise there’s no stopping you from believing every conspiracy with no guard rails.

      I don’t think there’s yet a specific smoking gun on this front, but I think once there is, then it is okay to presume it likely happening in other instances. But no smoking gun just yet.

      • glitching@lemmy.ml
        1·
        17 hours ago

        you’re ignoring the important part - who that’s coming from.

        analyzing a new shit-sandwich from the shit-sandwich-shop to determine “does this one have shit in it” is a valid academic endeavor, but hardly something you’d spend one second of your life pondering.

  • sakuraba@lemmy.ml
    6·
    1 day ago

    Every device made to receive voice commands (Smart TVs, Amazon Echo) WILL listen to everything you say.

    And if they provide a button or setting to turn that off you are relying on trusting them to comply with it (I don’t think they do and even if they are found doing it they will probably pay a minuscule fine for it)

  • pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip
    36·
    1 day ago

    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”.

    • Alberat@lemmy.world
      12·
      2 days ago

      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)

      • eleitl@lemmy.zip
        5·
        1 day ago

        I don’t trust my smartdevices farther than I can throw them. Hence, I run GrapheneOS.

    • frozenspinach@lemmy.mlEnglish
      31·
      1 day ago

      One’s a settlement with a blanket denial of guilt for Siri and Google Assistant. At least mild circumstantial evidence, because there’s a real mechanism (accidental activation and recording) is identified, but no proof, and certainly no proof of an ongoing intentional data broker style program. But at least enough of a pain that they won a settlement. So that counts as a trace of meaningful circumstantial evidence.

      But the second one is just a link to sell you a product that doesn’t provide any evidence whatsoever and doesn’t even pretend to, it discusses the possibility in vague generalities as something hackable and tries to sell you a product. I’m baffled as to why you think that counts as a source.