I changed the title from “Spying” to “Eavesdropping” because the article actually directly supports that it is “spying” on you, just not listening.
So this article is suspect. It says that we’re not being recorded so some distance advertiser can run ads, yet Alphonso was caught doing just that.
Do better “journalists”
Alphonso is listening for TV sound signatures, which while definitely intrusive and privacy invading, is not the same as 24/7 listening for voice-to-text-to-ad purposes.
They would only need to listen for a second or so to determine what channel you are on, instead of all the time, so there is a massive difference in scope.
They are effectively shazaming your TV.
Still creepy and invasive, but not 24/7 recording invasive.
Unless you are aware of further developments than I am, Alphonso required permissions and provided a consent dialog so it could not be considered spying or eavesdropping.
Article littered with affiliate links.
And it also doesn’t make sense.
I think I get what it’s saying? It’s saying that while your phone isn’t directly listening to your conversations in any meaningful way they collect crazy amounts of other data on basically everyone and can piece it together in such a way that they can make some scary accurate guesses as to the kind of ads to serve you based on what their systems have gathered your interests are and where/with whom you spend your time.
I’m not entirely sure. They didn’t really seem to present much more than speculation on it.
A while back on Reddit I saw a post asking about this stuff. Companies don’t need to “listen” anymore, they have much more sophisticated options now. This example will use 3 people: A (wife) B (husband) and C (wife’s old friend from school).
The question: A goes to the store without B, and runs into C, who proceeds to tell A about this cool gaming chair he just got. After the conversation, A puts the interaction aside and never mentions it to B. B later gets ads for the gaming chair. If B never had any interaction whatsoever about the chair, and A never even talked about it to B, how does B get the ads?
The answer: A goes to the store, and her phone knows this through location data. The algorithm knows A is at the store, and now picks up that C is also at the same store. The algo then finds a connection through social media that A and C know each other, and maybe even knows spending habits and sees A and C buy similar things. The odds are good that A and C will interact at the store.
C has been searching about this gaming chair for months, has just recently bought it, and talks about it constantly on socials. Odds are good that if A and C interact, C will talk about the chair.
A has no interest in gaming or tech, but B does. The algo knows A and B are married, and B would be interested in the chair C just bought. There is now a vector to send ads from the interaction of A and C directly to B, even though A never mentioned anything about the chair to B, and B has never even met C.
This is what I’ve been saying for years. You don’t need to listen to someone’s microphone to serve eerily relevant ads. I’ve heard people commonly discussing how they talked about something and saw an ad for it later. You’re already being tracked everywhere and a bit of confirmation bias is all you need to focus in on the times it works. It’s like that story of the prenatal vitamins being recommended to that woman who didn’t realize she’s pregnant.
This isn’t to say that I don’t believe someone can’t possibly turn on the mic in a targeted attack, but few of us are having conversations that are that important. It’s way easier to target you other ways using data that’s much more available.
It would cost like $1k for some YouTuber to buy a few burner android phones, slap prepaid sims in them, and then talk to them about their love of Hyundai and protein powder. It would blow the whole lid off whatever conspiracy were all just resigning ourselves to.
Such an easy thing to test and yet there’s zero evidence that it’s happening. At least the way people assume.
How would it even work? You would need to transmit and process mind boggling levels of data, in almost real time according to some of these stories.
If you’re already taking about a product you’ve likely already been swayed by targeted marketing (not just online but physical/traditional too). And you only become more aware after you’ve seen an ad with it still on your mind. And this is the moment where some people say that their phone must’ve been listening to them earlier on, because they can’t seem to comprehend cohorts and marketing in general.
See, people say that ad companies can use all this information they gather to better serve targeted advertising, but that’s just not my anecdotal experience.
I get served ads all the time in languages I don’t speak, for VERY specific job related audiences that I’m not even close to related to, state politics that I’ve never lived in, services that I’m already actively subscribed to, just the worst targeting ever.
If I have to get advertised to, I’d so much rather get an ad that could actually be at all relevant to my life, or even some generic ad over the total misses.
Like, if you’re going through the trouble to do all this shady shit to get my data at least be good at it using it…
If targeted advertising worked the way they say it does then why is Amazon with my entire purchase history at their disposal, still unable to stop themselves from trying to sell me a second washing machine just after I bought one from them? Or Audible with hundreds of books in my account, most of them English, is still trying to sell me German versions of books with original English language versions? The whole notion that advertising has all that data to do better advertising assumes a competence level that just isn’t there.
Because Amazon just have a shit algorithm. They don’t distinguish single purchase items but their algorithm is skewed to try and get you to come back to get the things you got in the past.
Oooo close. It’s a shit algorithm that favours the company that paid the most for the spot. So people rely on paying for a good spot to get promoted on the most minor fucking chance of someone buying their shitty item. I heard someone say the average best item you search for is found 17th place.
They’re scamming the buyer and the seller and profiting off of being terrible for everyone.
I mean, what’s the point of collecting all that data if there is no use to it. Why offering you a points program that seemingly gives you free stuff for tracking your purchases if there is no benefit to the company. I’d say unless it’s a hugely incompetent company, they don’t collect so much data on people for no reason whatsoever.
And its been going on for decades with some people having handed in their info to various companies, many of them maybe even connected at some level the different dots on people, for the entire time. And that’s all for nothing so now those companies also need to record you 24/7? Which is an even bigger amount of data to be stored exactly where? Also needs a massive amount of filtering, because really, how meaningful are everyday conversations of people.
I stopped reading when it started suggesting VPNs. Your’re far more likely to be profiled by a VPN provider than your ISP.
Privacy is not a product you can purchase.
I live in a country where our ISPs are required by law to keep a record of our internet metadata. When ISPs have been subpoenaed in the past ths answer has often been “we don’t keep that data”.
So in that case we’re looking at a likelihood of 1 vs less than 1. So you’re wrong there.
Plus, I would love to hear your source on these probabilities you proclaim. Can you share how you know this?
You said “far more likely”, so one assumes you have the numbers.
There are definitely some VPN providers to worry about.
VPNs are a security tool but they don’t protect people as much as they think. They hide DNS traffic your ISP would have received, so that your ISP can’t tell everyone which cuckold or affair site you access (except you probably forgot to turn the VPN on one time or another so…)
Your ISP can still see IP addresses you connect to, they forward all your traffic. Good opsec is a nightmare. Ad blocking does more for less cost than getting a VPN will ever do (except for certain human rights circumstances but I’d wager they’re actually going to be careful).
My personal tip is use DNS over HTTPS/TLS where possible, and don’t use Cloudflare or Google. Ad an ad blocker and it’s far easier to setup and way more cost effective than VPN.
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I don’t give a damn if I miss out on the coolest thing ever. Spying on us is wrong. That’s how we got Donny. By letting the elite do what they want.
