Is your phone really listening to you? Here's what we know

Yes, that is a more rational take. Though it is from last year, based on the original 404 Media article (not the update from this year which OP's article is piggybacking off). I would encourage people to just read the 404 Media articles or, if they can't do that, listen to the 404 team discuss them on their podcast. When you get away from all the clickbait headlines from people trying to make money off 404's reporting and actually listen to what is being said by the people who know more about this story than anyone else, it becomes pretty clear that this isn't the slam dunk so many privacy illiterate people on social media would have you think it is.

And because some random report from a third-party who is just as interested in profit said something that matches the worldview of the general masses is out, you're going to believe them?

I don't care what "tech" it is, they are incentivized to lie and you know it. I am still baffled at how absolutely anyone takes the word of corporations to heart

How do you think your friend in the woods got the advertisements?

And yes, I still think you're too trusting of Big Tech. They are 100 times more vile than you think they are. THEY WILL do everything they can, and this is nothing to them.

The funny part is nobody wants to believe me and instead want to trust for-profit companies for their supposed pinkie-promises. Oh well, they'll learn in time.

Security researchers would've noticed this.

They did notice. Malicious apps that use everything they can to spy on you are old news.

To your point - this isn't confirmation that any of the big players are listening directly. That would probably have been caught by security researchers, although it would be really difficult in Google's or Amazon's case, as they run proprietary software at a very low level.

The news here is two fold;

1. Cox got caught buying that data, and when confronted about it, Google, Amazon, and Meta all failed to deny that they also buy that data from those malicious app makers.

2. This is strong evidence that someone is routinely collecting that data. That's news. We've suspected for awhile that, at minimum, the malware apps do. Occam's razor says at minimum, we should now assume many malware apps are using microphone to collect speech and submit it elsewhere for analysis.

The unprovable part of this that smells much worse is: a kid in a basement writing malware does not have the computing power to turn tons of raw voice recordings into useful correlated data.

That kid needs an ally with a lot of computing power. Google, Meta, and Amazon all have a motive here and have the necessary computing power.

And all three worded their denials pretty carefully, I noticed.

What bug? It's super easy to do this in an app that already has access to your microphone, like Whatsapp, then extract only keywords from conversations and send them to Meta packed as innocuous numeric codes piggybacking on the overhead of encrypted connections.

A single byte here and there is all you need to know people were talking about cats, or perfume, or shoes etc.

Whatsapp protocol, app and servers are closed source, and Meta apps will download and compile native code upon installation, which escapes normal JVM restrictions and does God knows what.

On certain brands of phones (like Samsung) Meta apps come with a manufacturer-preinstalled system stub that can do pretty much whatever it wants, but is typically used to elevate the rights of Meta apps that were installed via normal means and to collect information from them as well as any app that's running ads from Meta.

And this is a company that's a third party to the Android ecosystem — it's a lot easier for Google themselves, who are datamining the shit out of everything you do on a phone, from second-by-second location to email. And Meta is datamining the shit out of absolutely everything you put on Facebook and Instagram, in spite of any fines and sanctions. And Microsoft are datamining the shit out of everything you do on your PC and they're openly pushing Recall and Copilot and have been pushing Cortana for so long.

What do you think Cortana and OK Google were listening for?.Hell, Amazon and Google were both caught storing recordings of people's conversations in the beginning, before they started hiding it better.

So you're being watched in every way possible in every single thing you do that touches any technology from these companies, we have countless documented instances of them breaking privacy in heinous ways like giving up people to authoritarian governments and to anti-abortion governments in the US and so on...

...and you're seriously wondering if they're snooping on your conversations? They have every means at their disposal, they're using it every second, and you're wondering if they're doing that too?

Why wouldn't they? It's obvious that we live in a world where it's ok to ask forgiveness (and you'll get a slap on the wrist, if that) rather than permission. What would possibly compel them to not do it?

Consequences? What consequences? We already know for a fact they spy on so much stuff and we keep using their tech. There are no consequences.

But without hard evidence I don't believe random apps are just recording clandestinely in the background.

I certainly do. Malware attempts to record you is old news.

We have always assumed voice was off the table for practical reasons - voice recordings are expensive to decode and correlated usefully.

Cox has particularly deep pockets, which makes this interesting.

I do actually agree, this really could just have been a vendor bullshitting. Normally I would say Occam's razor points there. But Occam's razor points the other way, to me, when I consider that basically everyone I know has experienced a voice targeted ad.

The big ugly question is which apps are recording voices?

It might just be name squatting spyware. I haven't seen confirmation that any do this, and I always assumed it was too expensive. Maybe it still is, but my guess is Cox isn't the only ones who got that sale offer.

The creepy part is, if you're not inclined to take Google, Amazon, and Meta at their word, then one wonders what other apps are recording voices...

Here's the conspiracy part:

• Apps by Meta famously ask for more permissions than they should reasonably need.
• Both Google and Amazon publish operating systems that promise us they are enforcing our permission preferences, while definitely collecting more behavior data than most people would feel comfortable with, if they were aware.
• We know that all three companies thrive on tracking our behavior, and selling what they learn.
• One of the three had to change it's corporate slogan away from "don't be evil".

The conspiracy emerges when we look at these data points and squint a little.

Edit: I think many of y'all are in denial about how much you shouldn't trust Meta apps on your phones.

We know Meta wants to use things you say to build an ad profile. We have evidence they don't have any moral qualms about doing it. We know they have unfathomable terms of service and closed source apps.

And now we know there's been at least one closed door conversation about buying the recordings that supposedly don't exist.

I don't have proof but I also don't have any apps by Meta on my phone.

Google said "Apps using Android Private Core will not show a mic indicator" or something like that

That's a bad fact lol

It was not just a "leak" this was literally on their website a year ago: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/no-a-marketing-firm-isnt-tapping-your-device-to-hear-private-conversations/

Marketing people bullshitting to get investor money. Anyone can imagine non existent technology and lie on the internet, you don't have to believe everything

Maybe it's a distraction for cars constantly listening to you. Their privacy policies are horrid and they don't have a mic listening feature.