Privacy / Tech

[Lmg80]

Not a conspiracy theorist whatsoever, and a massive advocate of smart tech. But I draw a line when seemingly personal devices listening in (or not) but this cannot be a co-incidence.

Okay, so last night went to the freezer and asked wife what we're those turkey swizzlers. Not seen them before, left at that. No googling literally ended there.

Fast forward to just now, Google feed. "11 forgotten nostalgic foods from your childhood - from Spam to Angel Delight". Turkey twizzlers being listed. Co-Incidence .

My feed is obviously my interests / what I generally google i.e. tech, news, F1 and flight/racing sim related. Never had a keen interest in anything culinary related so totally random.

My house is full of Google gadgets

 

[ttaskmaster]

Of course they're listening in.
Usually they're a bit more accurate than that, though. I've had one that threw up some very specific items that I had specifically been talking about, but only ever once and at a time when the phone was all the way downstairs in a pocket... so it will have picked that up through two walls and a floor.

Following this post, I expect to be getting adverts for old 5.56mm light machine guns or something, by this time next week.

 

[Feek]

My house is full of Google gadgets

There you have it.

Do you also have Messenger, WhatsApp and any other variants of messaging apps. If you do and you never use them for voice calls, go into the privacy settings on your phone and remove their access to the microphone.

 

[Deleted User 298457]

Alexa et al. are hardware activated (hence why you only get such a limited choice of wake words). They aren't listening unless you are talking to them.

Smart TVs on the other hand, who knows.

 

[Pawnless Endgame]

Smart TVs on the other hand, who knows.

We might not be upper or middle class, but the rest is very much true. They are telescreens from our Orwellian agenda. Even when you're asleep, Big Brother is watching you.

In Oceania, the upper and middle classes have very little true privacy. All of their houses and apartments are equipped with telescreens so that they may be watched or listened to at any time. Similar telescreens are found at workstations and in public places, along with hidden microphones. Written correspondence is routinely opened and read by the government before it is delivered. The Thought Police employ undercover agents, who pose as normal citizens and report any person with subversive tendencies. Children are encouraged to report suspicious persons to the government, and some denounce their parents. Citizens are controlled, and the smallest sign of rebellion, even something as small as a suspicious facial expression, can result in immediate arrest and imprisonment. Thus, citizens are compelled to obedience.

 

[nine_tails]

Sheer coincidence i think. (Not jeff bezos)

 

[dowie]

Not a conspiracy theorist whatsoever,[...]but this cannot be a co-incidence.

You are kind of drawing a conspiracy-like conclusion though, people have been claiming this sort of thing for a few years now, it likely is a coincidence.

 

[Rroff]

I can't prove it and not sure if it is still the case but I found having the Netflix app installed with microphone permissions was causing ads for specific brands to be triggered by mentioning them a few times near the device - not sure it was "listening in" generally but definitely seemed to be something was activated by mentioning brand names. Far too often to be coincidence. Soon as I removed its microphone permissions that stopped happening...

 

[mmj_uk]

Alexa et al. are hardware activated (hence why you only get such a limited choice of wake words). They aren't listening unless you are talking to them.

How do you turn them on with a "wake word" if they aren't already listening? when you connect a microphone within your home to the internet you've got to be a bit naive to believe that you have any privacy. Service provider, government agency, hackers etc all have access to your private conversations.

 

[Deleted User 298457]

How do you turn them on with a "wake word" if they aren't already listening? when you connect a microphone within your home to the internet you've got to be a bit naive to believe that you have any privacy. Service provider, government agency, hackers etc all have access to your private conversations.

Like I said, it is powered on but the wake word is a hardware feature not a software feature. An Alexa will "wake up" when you say Alexa, even if the internet is disconnected. Because it is a hardware/firmware feature, not an internet connected feature.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

if I type Turkey Twizzler on this page it will probably end up on my Facebook because there is Facebook code on this page.

 

[The_Arbiter]

Wouldn't be too difficult to do an experiment, if you're curious. Just have a recording of your voice talking about something, set that on loop play next to device, see what you get. Find something you've never spoken about, like Dressage (horse dancing).

 

[LuckyBenski]

How do you turn them on with a "wake word" if they aren't already listening? when you connect a microphone within your home to the internet you've got to be a bit naive to believe that you have any privacy. Service provider, government agency, hackers etc all have access to your private conversations.

Ok simple explanation from an electronic engineer (me):

- These smart home devices usually don't have the processing power to convert audio dialogue to text data. They rely on sending the audio to a remote server to do that work and return the text.

- If they were always listening there would be literally, continuous unbroken internet traffic to and from the speech-to-text service.

- To get around this, there is an audio (analogue sound, not words/text) filter known as a match filter, in the device. It knows what the waveform of its wake word looks like e.g. a clip of the words "hey Google" is stored in its filter config.

- This audio filter is continuously listening, but all it can do is hear noise, not words, and go "DING" when it hears the wake word. When the match filter goes DING, the device starts capturing audio from the microphone and sending it to... The internet speech recognition service.

- This string of speech is converted to text and used as a request either locally or passed to another online server which can interpret commands and take action. e.g. "Volume down" will have a local effect but "Show me nearby carwashes" will go and ask Google for more info.

This overcomes the (justified) fear of an always-on microphone in the home. Another solution is to not use a wake word, and have a button instead. Note that Samsung TVs in the early 2010s were guilty of secret microphone naughtiness. Modern smart TVs usually put the microphone in the remote and require a button hold in order to create the same level of protection.

 

[LuckyBenski]

Like I said, it is powered on but the wake word is a hardware feature not a software feature. An Alexa will "wake up" when you say Alexa, even if the internet is disconnected. Because it is a hardware/firmware feature, not an internet connected feature.

^ this. Try it: say "Parexun" loudly in your living room if you've got Amazon stuff. Or "No way, Dougal" if you have Google.

Our Google interrupts rudely to yell I CAN'T SEEM TO FIND ANY INTERNET RIGHT NOW as soon as the match filter is triggered.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

Wouldn't be too difficult to do an experiment, if you're curious. Just have a recording of your voice talking about something, set that on loop play next to device, see what you get. Find something you've never spoken about, like Dressage (horse dancing).

I've had loads, last one was me and my mate talking about bike locks and Krytonite ads came up on Facebook.

 

[Dirk Diggler]

Not a conspiracy theorist whatsoever, and a massive advocate of smart tech. But I draw a line when seemingly personal devices listening in (or not) but this cannot be a co-incidence.

Okay, so last night went to the freezer and asked wife what we're those turkey swizzlers. Not seen them before, left at that. No googling literally ended there.

Fast forward to just now, Google feed. "11 forgotten nostalgic foods from your childhood - from Spam to Angel Delight". Turkey twizzlers being listed. Co-Incidence .

My feed is obviously my interests / what I generally google i.e. tech, news, F1 and flight/racing sim related. Never had a keen interest in anything culinary related so totally random.

My house is full of Google gadgets

It's not conspiracy, I've tested this and can confirm that Google picks up keywords from verbal conversations on WhatsApp and targets ads accordingly. That's why I moved over to Brave browser and email is now paid/hosted O365 as opposed to Gmail.