Good thing everyone diligently reads the T&A of Pool 3d before using it. You are reading every line of text before you hit agree, and then uninstall, right?
On the other hand, it’s amazingly easy for advertisers to figure out what topics / products you’re talking about without the need for constantly recording via your microphone. In most instances, it doesn’t even really make sense to constantly record audio via the mic to monitor folks, other means are much more cost efficient while being just as effective. That’s not to say that some app isn’t or hasn’t done it, just that historically speaking, it hasn’t been as ubiquitous as a lot of people seem to think or imply.
Sometimes with these things, you have to apply Occam’s Razor.
I stayed with some family during the holidays a few years ago and they are conspiracy theory fanatics unfortunately. The type that swear their phones are listening to everything they say. They get ads for things they’ve only ever talked about in person. That sort of thing.
As proof, they pointed out how the prior night the topic of old timey candy from our childhoods came up and all of a sudden they were getting news stories and facebook ads about those liquid filled wax bottle candies. To them, the only plausible explanation is that our phones were listening to us.
Except, as I pointed out, I specifically looked those wax bottle candies up later that night because I was curious if they were still for sale. They live way out in the country and there’s limited cellular data, so basically everybody there that night was using the same wifi connection. Which means, our internet activity is all linked because to the outside world, we’re all on the same network/IP address. Even more curious, though, nobody got ads for any of the other candy that we talked about and which I didn’t specifically look up. So, if our phones were actually recording us and serving up ads based on the things we talked about, then why didn’t we get ads for Blackjack gum, wax lips, and Brach’s? Only the very specific one I happened to search for.
This is what a lot of people don’t get. Plus often people see an ad or content and forget. Later they bring it up without realizing the thing is trending. It’s all self feeding.
So much of social media (and online in general) is just ads in disguise and people shilling products, intentionally or otherwise, and it ultimately spills over into real life conversations. So I agree with you completely.
You might have given a thumbs up to your aunt Gina’s photo of her and her friends at the office party celebrating her promotion. Ad networks see it as you interacting with a photo that contains a bottle of Schmudd soda, even if that’s a detail you didn’t even notice.
You have dinner with your dad that night and the topic of Schmudd comes up due to the latest forced controversy (ermagerd the trans) so naturally when you start seeing Schmudd commercials the next day, you might assume your phone was listening to that conversation. But actually the reason you’re seeing the ads is because of the thumbs up to aunt Gina’s post.
And yes, the tracking and analytics tools find those types of patterns and relationships, and so much more. And they’ve been able to do that for over a decade. No telling how good it’s gotten since I was last working adjacent to that field.
No they dont , they dont have to. Far easier to get things other ways.
Yes, but also no. You’re underestimating advertisers’ greed for data.
It’s actually trivial nowadays to build a background service like that.
Which would show up in network traffic , which it doesnt. There is no need for it.
You could easily process the audio and filter in on the device and just send the transcribed parts that match your filters for further processing. No need to send a constant audio stream. Eventually it would show up in the battery usage but things like the google song recognition also heavily use the mic and process audio and it doesn’t show up as heavy as you would expect.
Ok, real question: what exactly would show up in network traffic?
Evidence of voice collection and data transmission. Just hook it up to wireshark and test. It’s been done and zero evidence produced. Not trivial to hide. Neither in traffic or battery use .
Btw independent aricle from 2008 heres something a decade fresher https://www.androidauthority.com/your-phone-is-not-listening-to-you-884028/
Why would they need to do it anyway? Far easier to just use the telemetry already there. Your phone knows more about you than you think already if you don’t use privacy respecting software. No need to use the microphone. But if you know something none from the security field does, I’m all for seeing some evidence.
Nevermind the why (I’m not entirely convinced it’s being done), I want to know what exactly would be seen in network traffic.
Ok, you said “voice collection” which I’ll assume is audio recording and then uploading to some server. That’s an astonishingly bonkers and inefficient way of doing it. You run a very small model (using something like Tflite) that’s trained against a few hundred keyboards (brand names, products, or product category) and run it on the background of your service. Phones already do essentially this with assistant activation listening. Then once a few hours of listening, compress the plain text detection data (10 MB of plain text can be compressed to 1 MB) and then just upload the end result. And we wouldn’t be talking about megabytes, we’d be talking single digits kilobytes. An amount that wouldn’t even be a blip on wireshark, especially since phones are so exceedingly chatty nowadays. Have you actually tried to wireshark phone traffic? It’s just constant noise.
It’s entirely possible to do. But that doesn’t mean that it is being done.
It would cost trillions and half the battery life. Just because you dont understand something doesnt make you right. Your entire argument is shattered in the link I provided you earlier. Its not a few kb needed and if done locally a huge battery eater. Not to mention that the cost to have any use of it would exceed the entire value of the admarket.
there are plenty of people that can find shit in the noise on wireshark if there was anything like what you are suggesting.
Also there is a teapot in orbit around jupiter. Prove me wrong.
Just because you dont understand
Lol. My dude, I’m a developer who specializes in AI.
It would cost trillions
I have no clue how you came to that number. I could (and partially have) whipped up a prototype in a few days.
half the battery life
Hardly. Does Google assistant half battery life? No, so why would this? Besides, you would just need to listen to the mic and record audio only if the sound is above a certain volume threshold. Then once every few hours batch process the audio. Then send the resulting text data (in the KBs) up to a server.
The average ad data that’s downloaded for in-app display is orders of magnitude larger than what would be uploaded.
there are plenty of people that can find shit in the noise on wireshark
How are they going to see data that’s encrypted and bundled with other innocuous data?
Go ahead, make TVs more smart. We literally removed our TV thus weekend. If you want me to upgrade it, please removed the spyware.
Next TV that breaks and we won’t have one. I’ll do a projector for movie night and that’s it.
Same. The only ‘TV’ I currently own is my monitor. Fuck that shit, I’m so over modern television as a concept.
My tvs are connected to an SSID that can’t hit the internet. I blocked them before but my dumb ass neighbor left their WiFi unprotected and my tvs just connected to them because it couldn’t get out the internet on my network. So I created an SSID logged them in and blocked it from the internet. It doesn’t bounce to open WiFi anymore. If I block it completely from the network the WiFi just disconnects from the network because it can’t hit anything. I have LG’s.
Why is it even legal for it to just hop open networks automatically? Sure, if you leave your wifi unsecured you’re dumb and anyone can access it, but it’s still not a network you have permission to access
The fact that they just desperately jump on any network is absurd. Its acting like malware.
It’s not an act!
That is an insane thing to have to do. Having to manipulate your TV into not doing something you don’t want or require it to do.
May be even dozens
is this still a surprise to anyone here?
Anyone whos said anything outloud and then immediately got an ad should know by now that it isnt some conspiracy, its easily testable by not searching something and just talking about it while having an app open, the more obvious one they track is dms, if I dm someone something (text based not posts) ill get ads or posts related to it.
Im assuming they target your wifi too, because my ads change to reflect what I do on other devices too (always noticable as a hobby hopper)
I remember a bunch of people freaking out about this a few years ago and an equal number telling them they were paranoid.
You can talk about stuff and your phone will just magically start suggesting related items. Why would anyone be surprised the monitoring device in their pocket is monitoring them?
Yes.
Not to you or me, but there are tons of people, even here, that are absolutely incredulous towards the idea that its possible.
I mean it implies that these apps are both violating permissions (in many cases) and the android visual indication of an active microphone. So far I have seen no actual proof that this is the case. Mic activity is logged. You can debunk this yourself easily.
I’m part of those people. The usual argument is that everybody’s phone is listening all the time, without agreeing to permissions or showing the mic notification or anything like that. I’ve never seen any proof of that. This article is about a bunch of shovelware apps (Pool 3D, Beer pong: Trickshot, Honey Quest etc) that aren’t even listed anymore. There’s nothing about them skirting permissions or hiding the notification.
People see the headline and assume it’s Facebook et al.
Not helpful
I thought Android has a non bypassable green dot in the notification bar when the micro is on ?
I feel like you’re missing the point. Showing a green dot still doesn’t solve the problem or make it ok, especially when this technology works in the background and can capture sound even while the device is in your pocket, like the article says.
I don’t think we should have to be on the lookout for a little dot showing up on the screen constantly. It shouldn’t even ask for microphone access unless it’s absolutely essential for the app’s main purpose. “Features” like this should always be off by default and buried deep in the settings. If people really wanted it (they don’t), they’d go in and turn it on themselves.
This is literally how it works. In modern android you need to explicitly grants microphone permission to apps the first time you use them. Now, if they are clickjacking the permission notification, that’s something different, but the article doesn’t mention this. You can download your own microphone logs and verify if you are curious about this.
You’re absolutely right but that wasn’t my point. I thought that if one of my installed app was doing this, at some point I’d have seen it without even being on the lookout.
It’s probably bypassable too. And, anytime the microphone is used, you have no idea the multiple extents that data is being used for.
Apps can use the microphone in secret and there’s no way to know when they’re using the microphone? This is a major security flaw in Android!
Are you kidding? You do know that basically anything is hackable, right? And that’s why old people put tape and stuff over their cameras if they don’t just outright unplug them, right? It seems silly, but like… They’ve always been right, with their insane passwords and avoiding using their real names and stuff.
afaik Android System Intelligence and apps using that will not show the mic icon
Users need to know what this dot means, and some like children or the elderly will likely not understand the ramifications
Beer pong
Yeah that sounds like an app user who would be okay with his audio being recorded…
An app where all you end up recording is “Bro! Bro! Bro! Broseeeeph! Let’s gooooooo, Bro!”
This might just push my fear of targeted ads enough to give in to my idea of a nearly soundproof box for my phone when I’m not using it. :(
You could remove the mic and pretend it’s a modern iPod 😁
Just install an OS that allows per-app microphone permissions. I’m running LineageOS and I can tell it for example to only allow Whatsapp mic access when I actively open the app. Actually according to the article, the same can be done on plain Android too.
yeah, alphonso appeared on my mibox, eset called it a trojan right after the update. had to delete it through adb, cause its a “system app”
Reading this made me wonder if I was having a stroke, because it seems like English but I don’t recognize so many of the words. 👴
Right around the confinement my sister and I were talking about getting some seeds for my mom. Neither of us searched for seeds. From that point we both started to get ads for seeds, many for the ones we had talked about in particular. This thing was so unequivocal that it proved to me that our phones listen. Maybe they don’t analyze, but they definitely listen for words actionable for an advertising purposes.
More likely, your late’ish habits and searches combined with age and another mountain of data correlated with people that have the same thought. We are no snowflakes.
Edit: I should say, if this example is true. I’m not saying you are lying, just that if you are, it’s not a “gotcha”. This thread is making me paranoid! :)
The thing is you can test it, simply never search anything related to it and see if you get ads, maybe I accidentally searched something but it works, or it could be wifi based maybe they searched something and it effected everyones ads, this could make sense if my roommates searched stuff and it effected my ads
I happened to say out loud to my girlfriend that there is a chance (a small one) that my ADHD medication can cause something called TD (Tardive Dyskinesia).
Suddenly, our Netflix is showing adds for a new medication for it.
That’s why i always forbid access to my microphones by apps. Many AI apps will also remember what you discussed long ago.
OS doesn’t need permissions to access hardware
I used to work for a mobile advertiser, and we installed hella bloatware on phones.
This idea was floated a couple times but was deemed not very effective cause you’d have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn’t tell us much more than just having a week or so of GPS data, your Facebook profile, and your phone IMEI.
It’s pretty easy to see if you’re near a Popeyes and what other IMEIs are connecting to the same tower, extrapolate that to you being near your wife and you and your wife thinking about shit on the Popeyes menu.
Boom targeted ad/video for fried chicken.
The rest is general tech paranoia leading to Apophenia.
There’s no microphones or cameras, it’s just the already gigantic mountain of data anyone who uses a smartphone is constantly broadcasting getting ground through the big data machine that has been the pillar of all tech since the last recession.
If it’s trying to figure out if you’re watching Stranger Things it can look for when your stationary at home and just needs to record a few seconds at a time every few minutes. I don’t know how the fingerprinting works. It might be able to run locally and not use a ton of power. We’re talking Shazam, not full text transcription.
Here’s the thing. If you watch that, Netflix know your IP. If you’re on an Android TV box, Google will know your IP.
Odds are your phone is on the Wifi. Linked through IP. Now you get ads for Stranger Things on your phone. It doesn’t need to listen because everything is so leaky. You are linked on so many devices.
Also, have you ever been butt-dialed by someone? 99% of the time you can’t understand a single word, let alone enough to make any semantic sense out of.
you’d have to store and process hours and hours of audio data that didn’t tell us much
I mean that could be solved as simply as a local transcription service…
And do what? Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text. That’s something even the new fancy LLMs struggle with.
Unnecessary when there’s way better targeted models trained on years of data that people willingly send as part of everyday smartphone use.
tf-idf will give you the keywords you want to target ads
Sentiment analysis on the conversation you were having?
Among other things, sure. More simply, keyword analysis.
Remember semantically aware models are still fairly new and even they lack the context for a particular field of text.
All of these “models” are useless garbage but it doesn’t stop them from trying to absolutely cram them everywhere they can.
Unnecessary
None of what they do is “necessary”. They could just ask you what your relevant interests are and you could tell them, but they do it anyway. They go to great lengths for any seemingly insignificant amount of data they can get their hands on.
But wouldnt it be a moot point if I restrict access to GPS for all apps?
How much of that data is from Google/Apple (e.g. Google Maps)?If you use android google grabs your GPS data regardless, you have to root and disable it.
Apple does the same thing but they didn’t have their pants occupied by third-party network’s fingers like google did until the pixel came out.
Google maps is basically a beacon for AdMob to target you nearly perfectly.
Also using “fine location” in any app grabs the nearby wifi list and sends it to Google/apple if it’s not cached.
Also most ad providers these days have made deals with major networks that let them tell what tower your IMEI pinged off of.
It’s why google tried to push android/ad IDs, way less info for the networks to advertise over, and it also put the tracking in their hands instead.
So graphene os ir a degoolged phone solves the first thing
Use NextDNS with strong filters and the DDG app with App Tracking Protection turned on. While no filter is 100% perfect, this combo stops the vast majority of privacy-invading shit from getting to 3rd parties.
I use shizuku for hidden api/shell access…the devs of that have an app called appops which, you guessed it, allow you to change any appops permission for any app. Allows denying/ignoring clipboard access, device identifiers, location, microphone, etc.
appops screenshots
:::App Ops still works? I haven’t used it in over a decade.
How can they tell I’m popping?.. Oh…what if I stopped flushing? So is that why some people don’t flush? They’re trying to be stealthy!
And people wonder why I keep rooting my Android phones.
Without advanced permission denial and file access restrictions, phones will spy on anything and anyone.
That helps with other dangers, but in this case all you need to do is not give “Pool 3D” access to the microphone, no rooting required.
Rooting is no longer required and is a security risk
Or do you mean flashing custom privacy respecting rom
No, I exactly mean rooting, and it is a hard requirement for me when choosing phones.
If you know what you’re doing, there is no security risk involved, since every app requesting for root access needs to be granted individually, and you can opt to do so for a limited time or permanently. Or not grant it at all, obviously.
Tools like AppOps (advanced permission management), Storage Isolation (prevent access to certain folders even if “file access” permission is granted to some app), Ice Box (keep certain apps in a permanent state of hibernation unless you explicitly launch them) are absolute core essentials.
Other apps that enable you to fully remove system apps, system level adblockers, VPN sharing etc. might be optional, and there are no-root workarounds, but they all come with serious limitations.
Hmm… Do you use a different root method than magisk? I don’t think a root method based on the efforts of a single developer is a safe practice.
There are other tools, but their developers aren’t publicly known. So I indeed trust into the one man show that is magisk, at least as a full time Google employee who gets his codebase reviewed in-house, there’s some more trust than to a random nobody. And he does publish the code and allows for user contributed fixes on github.
Appops is great. Just mentioned in another comment ,though I use shizuku.
Doesnt GrapheneOS provide some of these features?
That’s only available for Pixel phones, and I don’t buy from Google.
Little nitpick: Graphene OS isn’t artificially restricted to Google phones. Pixel phones just happen to be the only ones that fulfill the safety requiremets that Graphene OS wants.
Other manufacturers could do the same and Graphene OS devs would welcome it, they just choose not to do that.
Granting blanket root to all programs on an android phone sure that’s a risk; but who the fuck does that on any system…
From memory individual apps would be able to request root which could be denied, approved once, approved always or ignored.
Why would you provide any app with root access tbo?
What do they need it for?
Really depends on what you want to do.
Same as any Linux system you don’t want applications to have root access all the time. However if I want to remove a system file or modify something that a normal user isn’t able to, something is going to require higher privileges than the standard user account has.
Not OP but rooting is still necessary for advanced backups like those made using Swift Backup
