Android Microphone Snooping

your coworker might've looked up things related to the conversation, and the ad provider figured out that you two are in the same social circle. so far I haven't seen any actual research that would prove that ads are tailored based on microphone recordings (and actually seen the results stating the opposite a few years ago), just a bunch of anecdotal stories.

That's actually a great point. He is older and uses a dumb phone but we have been working with each other over 5 years so there are going to be lots of connections to each other. Furthermore this coincidental ad is rare, I haven't gotten one like this in awhile.
There are people who google stuff while being logged into google?

Every single example of this happening is anecdotal. The people who tried to properly investigate this have not found it to be true. If you find a video of an actual serious research who proves this is true then I'll admit that I'm wrong. Otherwise these types of posts are useless

404 Media has been investigating it. They have evidence of companies offering this service, both on their websites and through sources who say they've been pitched the product by company representatives. Many questions still remain but I'm not sure this issue can be dismissed as easily as it once was.
- Can you summarize their findings? Did they find evidence that this is being done in the wild without opt in or disclosure? Just because it's possible doesn't mean it's being used. Obviously the tech to spy on people via microphone isn't crazy complicated. The question is whether most apps use it. The amount of data that would be uploaded on people's data plans would be absurd. I'm very skeptical that this is actually widely used in mainstream apps.
  
  There have been SO many tests of this and not a single one has showed this actually happening.... Just because one single company tried to brag about a tech project to get free PR doesn't mean this is actually used...
- @czardestructo@lemmy.world you should have a listen to this as well (or read the articles it's based on). What you are describing may not be as tinfoil as some people believe.
A few years ago, I've read an article where the journalists investigated this. They asked to Facebook it they actually do it and Facebook confirmed.
- Gonna need to see a source on that one, please.
I saw at least one serious video about it. It was in Russian though and it's quite old. And maybe I saw one in English too. I don't remember. But I do believe that the microphone usage for targeted ads is true (or at least used to be true) on phones with Google apps installed

It's scary how accurate they can predict you with what data they have; they don't need to tap your microphone.

You're on a OnePlus; there's always a status bar icon if the microphone is active.

Think of what led to your conversation? Everything related to it you saw or searched online that could've later triggered you to talk about the subject, could also trigger them to serve you ads about it later. Perhaps your friend was the one, and the ad companies have linked you together, ie. by tracking your location and contacts.

And now you've noticed the adverts, you'll notice them much more, where you'd normally ignore them completely. Furthermore, if you noticed these ads, you might've clicked them or stopped scrolling and stared at them too long in a wtf moment and now the ad companies know, so they'll serve you a whole lot more of the same.

I've seen ads for things I've only thought about but haven't actually done any searches or even talked about yet. Innocuous stuff too, like a movie I wanted to buy on DVD. An older movie at that.

It's very eerie.
- They are probably just predictions based on the data the advertising companies gathered on you and you just happened to notice the ones that you only thought about.
You're on a OnePlus; there's always a status bar icon if the microphone is active.

This is a feature I think for all new Androids (at least pixel). BUT it does not cover all apps. System apps can hide it. Quick example, activate Google assistant voice activation. You should be seen the icon all the time, but likely you don't.
- I do see it on OnePlus though with all voice apps, including Google assistant. I think OxygenOS is not hiding it

The amount of battery used and data that your phone would be sending if it was constantly recording and sending the data to Google would be very obvious

Its more likely that Google and Co have just profiled you really well and or you searched for that specific topic before. Or that topic was an ad that you clicked on in the past or that you slowed down when scrolling to look at

Newer android version notify you in the top right when your microphone is active and you should also be able to see when the last time, down to the minute, that any app accessed the mic in settings

It's most likely a cause and effect reversal, in my opinion.

The conversation was happening because of the ads, not the other way around. Advertising works. It manipulates us into changing behavior, even without us realizing.

A real conversation makes you think about the thing being advertised, leading to you notice what would otherwise be totally below-the-radar things. People don't like to imagine they have been manipulated, so the conspiracy of the listening phone seems preferable.

Block all ads. All the time. They are bad for us.
I usef to be that "Google fan-boy", until I added a Pihole to my home network. Suddenly my phone's battery had improved by about 8% after about a week. Then I decided to install CalyxOS on my (at the time) Pixel 4 XL. My battery started to literally last at last at least 50% longer (from almost a full 24 hours from 100% to about 10–ish. You can say what you want, and it may not be the microphone or caneamra, but the fact is that phones (android or apple, it makes no difference) are constantly sending data to their servers, regardless of if you're using the phone or not. Don't believe me? Run a PCAP for 24 hours and you'll see, at the very least, 60 hits per hour to Google if you're on any android phone, and more on Apple because it send to Google and Apple (never kind whatever else you have installed on your phone). And Samsung is the worst offender on the Android scenario, because they regularly send data without consent to their own servers, Google and Meta (doesn't matter if you dont have any meta software installed, they still send metadata regularly). Again, I can't confirm nor deny the violation of your privacy via mic or camera, but the data transfers to those servers is not only well documented, they actually mention them to you the moment you're setting up your device. And before you say anything, Microsoft, from my stand point, is second only to Meta on this ridiculous data collection crap.
- I've been deGoogled for years, the battery saving was probably from not having Gapps running in the background, I know that Googles and Co are constantly phoning home but to say that they are turning on peoples mics and either running a service locally to transcribe the audio or sending whole audio files to themselves for marketing is unsubstantiated and a bit ridiculous, there's way easier ways to profile users through behavior analysis on their phones whether it be what apps and how long they use them or what posts/ ads user either scroll past slower or actually tap on.
  
  There's a very obvious difference between a few kilobits of text and a few megabits of audio and people would easily see if megabits of data were constantly being sent to from their phones every day
  
  Why waste so much energy and bandwidth trying to figure out what the mic picks up when the majority of it would be inaudible because of background noise or phones being in peoples pockets/bags when they can glean so much more data from how a user interacts with their phone for so much cheaper
Android is sending a ton of data, though, even if you're not doing anything internet related. It, also, kinda reacts to "okay, google", which wouldn't really be possible if it wasn't listening.

Now, it obviously doesn't keep a continuous, lossless audio stream from the phone to some google server. But, it could be sending text parsed from audio locally, or just snippets of audio when the thing detects speech. Relatively normal stuff to collect for analytics purposes, actually.

Now, data like that could "easily" get "misplaced", of course, and end up in the ad-shoveling machine... Not necessary at Google's hands: could be any app, really. Facebook, TickTok, random free to play Candy Crush clone, etc. But if that data gets into the interwoven clusterfuck of advertisement might, it will likely end up having an effect on the ads shown to the user.
- it does not upload audio clips unless you opt in during the first use of assistant
  well, and text will obviously get sent if assistant activation results in a google search, pretty sure actions like setting a timer run fully locally without any feedback to google (except general anonymous analytics data which is not that "scary")
Not possible. To be explicit, he was asking me my opinion about car maintenance and if I changed the oil in my cars every X miles OR every six months, or if the expiration time of oil was BS. I told him my opinion was that the age of the oil is irrelevant unless you idle your car for many hours at a time, just change it based on the millage. Today I got fed an article about how a dude tested the oil from various cars, with various ages and miles against brand new oil and found that age made no difference on the key characteristics of the oil. That is a remarkably specific article from a VERY specific VERBAL conversation I had over a Teams call on a work computer. It certainly got me thinking but again its the first time I've had one of those super specific ads in a long time that made me question my privacy.

Edit: I'm getting down voted, so people don't think this is a markably specific ad response? People really think Google is just this good to infer this type of article in less than 24 hours is just dumb luck because 'oil change'?
- Every day, millions of people discuss oil changes. If an article (was it an article or an ad?) is published on oil changes on X date, it is going to coincide with a large number of unlinked conversations. Today, it was you.
  
  Once is a coincidence, if you can prove a pattern then you should concerned.
- @czardestructo @AnEilifintChorcra
  
  So.. It's cool to ignore the date and just change oil at the recommended mileage?
  
  (My car is very rarely driven right now and I've often wondered this)
- I don't understand how people are still in denial that this is happening when it's so obvious.

The thing with tailored ads is, you’re more predictable than you think you are. Source: am a data scientist (not in advertisement).

It's more likely that ad networks are showing you ads based on the other person being in vicinity and having things in common. I don't think voice snooping is the main cause here

I have 0 apps allowed microphone access all the time.

There is no evidence that phones are snooping on people, but I would say even if unlikely it's a reasonable concern given what companies do get up to.

However it is more likely the ads were being served because of all the other data you're allowing Google to scrape from you all the time rather than the phone mic.

Rather than focusing on the microphone, look at the bigger picture of how your data is being pillaged by Google all the time.

For me, I switched away from Gmail, stopped using their search engine, use Firefox and not Chrome, and don't use their other services where possible. I have android on my phone and use Google maps and Google home. It's still a huge problem but I use that part of the ecosystem for convenience and no other. Similarly on PC I don't use Google for anything where I can avoid it, use Firefox containers to keep Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta data as separate as possible, plus I use Linux and VPN as needed, and lots of privacy extensions in Firefox.

It's possible to minimise your data exposure to the big tech companies, but difficult to severe completely. You could go even further and switch from android to Graphene OS (I have seriously considered this).

I would go by the principle of compartmentalising your data as much as possible and limiting access to snooping eyes. The transition can be hard but once you've done it you get used to using disparate unnonnected services. Like I really don't need or benefit from my email data being connected to my data storage or my search engine; it's a false convenience that benefitted Google only.

Thank you for the super thoughtful response. I'm in the process of fully ditching Windows. I use Vpn whenever I'm not home, I run my own cloud services, last big leap is to switch to graphene when I upgrade my phone and ditch the gmail accounts. I'm close and so finding this shockingly specific article got me thinking. Usually the articles are indeed spot on accurate but expected, not obscure yet specific.

me and a coworker tried an experiment almost ten years ago where we would whisper "breast milk pump" into a phone that had it's screen locked and everything. About two weeks later started seeing ads for expecting mothers, we are both dudes...

Weird but FOR SCIENCE also where do you see this ads ? In the browser or something ?
- Browser, Facebook, any app that has ads really.

Before caller ID people were SURE they were psychic because 'I was just thinking about them and they phoned'

The reality is the odds of things like that never happening are far more unlikely than it happening occasionally

I bet using an adblock would make it much more difficult for your phone to call home. Try adaway

I have whole house ad blocking with a pihole and its enforced with pfsense. All DNS traffic gets NATed to pihole.
- How are you seeing ads at all, then?
- DNS filtering only gets you so far. Its far, but certainly not at the end of the road. More complex and differently designed systems wont be bothered much.
  Encrypted DNS or simply hosting legitimate stuff on the same domain cannot really be fully blocked entirely or make your life difficult.
- Excellent choice. Check the logs, there's more than enough evidence in there to shut up some of the creepy big tech defenders in here. I see over 70,000 attempts from my wife's phone alone trying to hit Samsung, Google or Meta. She doesn't even have any Meta accounts, but has a Samsung phone, take a hint.
Why would you use that software in the first place

I had a friend that was convinced that facebook was listening because she was talking about some ice cream and later got an ad for said ice cream.

Well, of fucking course you got an ad for ice cream. It's fucking summer, you will get ads for ice cream in the summer.

I don't see on the provided screenshot any apps that shouldn't have the mic access. You can certainly deny it and break some apps functionality but you'll be "safe from ads"

did you or some of the people in your inner circle google whatever you talked about? that is also another way it would have come up in your ads.

Or watch it on YouTube. Or look at it on Facebook. Or whatever.

I didn't know there was a such thing as FUTO Voice Input. It's really good. Shame the "Open" nature of Google Android was rejected by Google Keyboard and other Google things...

Were both of you connected to the same network at the time you had the conversation? It’s possible your coworker had a lot of search/browsing history of what you were talking about and whoever is pushing the ads figured out you’re likely related to them by way of location/vicinity. I don’t think android is actively listening to your every conversation.

It's a very interesting coincidence. And say your co-worker was looking up stuff related to this subject why would it be you who gets served the ad? That doesn't really make sense. If mics were listening into conversations we'd be hearing a lot more of these "coincidence" stories and it's pretty rare to come across them. I am not saying it doesn't happen, I don't trust these fuckers with anything. I use Linux with NextDNS filters up the ass, and have a rooted, degoogled phone with Adaway on it because my trust is so low and I cannot stand ads - if one ever does get past my setup I immediately am searching for a way to find out how it got through, which is rare.

I love what you are doing with your house set-up. How did an ad get to you, I guess it was is on your phone.

Friend googles topic from his home wifi. You visit friend's home for a couple of hours with your phone's wifi enabled. Even without signing in to his wifi your phone still logs that you were in range of his wifi for 2 hours. Now you'll get served ads for the topic that he googled about, because people who spend time together often have similar interests, or you may mention the advertised product to him if he ever talks to you about the topic.

pinephone has hardware killswitch. but that cant protect you from other devices like other ppl phones.

I've noticed that too. Intentionally veered a conversation into a different topic and, lo and behold, I get "relevant recommendation" short time later. That was, not entirely coincidentally, the same day I unlocked the bootloader and flashed a de-googled ROM.

Just disble their acess then . I do not have most of these apps and the ones i have is only allowed very much needed and nonrevocable acess.

I've never had this happen to me but I am always on a a Degoogled version of Android such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS or /e/ OS.

Not using degoogled phone

Internet access to non foss apps

NGMI

Apps only use things like microphone, GPS and camera when the apps are active. Those are the permissions most lenient settings.

Just get a Pixel and flash GrapheneOS.

Most of these apps are communication apps that need the mic lol, you 100% could have picked better, way more egregious examples.

to some extent.. all human behavior is just POME

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Behaviorism

Androids statistically are higher in exploits, if you’re worried about privacy like I was, moving away from google entirely and all their code is probably best