Marketer sparks panic with claims it uses smart devices to eavesdrop on people

It’s solid proof there always hearing us.

there was actually a study performed a few years ago that didn't find any evidence for several thousand tested apps to listen on you (some of the scummy ones were caught recording screens, on the other hand). also, the company mentioned in the posted article admits that their claims were exaggerated.

It's a solid anecdote, for sure.

Absolutely not "proof" though. Unless you made absolutely sure to not accidentally look at a photo on social media of a baby for too long, or scrolled too slowly past a YouTube reel aimed at kids, or listened to a baby shark trap remix on Spotify.

We have LLM models that can give you (mostly) accurate data on how to do a given task based purely on their ability to guess which word comes next from the sources being fed to it, and you don't think algorithms exist to extrapolate your potential buying habits based on the aforementioned data points?

I've gotten very specific targeted ads before that were completely wrong, just because I'd watched like one YouTube video about the hobby or something. It's really just a prediction algorithm based on the troves of data our use of digital devices gives them.

Uh dude, your girlfriend is pregnant

I have ads blocked on nearly everything, but when I was at a client where they are not blocked, I got an ad for something I was talking about the week before. Don't remember it, but it happened exactly as you said.

A popular podcast in brazil called Brainstorm9 did the "bowl experiment", where everyone of the members talked about wanting to buy a bowl but only using their voice, they all started receiving ads for bowls, and I bet you never received a bowl ad since it's not a thing people often search for online.

I know people say they there are studies, etc, but I agree with you. My husband and I both don't like Taco Bell. There were zero searches for it, we never talked about it, etc. So we decided to test it. We started saying Taco Bell multiple times in different sentences.

Guess what suggested options popped up when we hit "T" into google or maps? Yup. Taco Bell

That last paragraph. I knew they were lying with that headline.

He's arguably a big enough target to actually worry about custom hardware modification attacks.

Do you know your sister didn't search for seeds?

That's probably because you have no technical knowledge of voice recognition whatsoever.

Lots of people of Siri disabled entirely. My household included.

At one point Google had highly specialized hardware that only listened for "ok Google"; that's why you couldn't (and AFAICT still can't) change the wake word.

Things may have changed in the years since I learned that, but I suspect recognizing a bunch of words from an ever-changing list would still need to be done in software and require the phone's CPU to run.

OTOH, the way Android phones recognize and songs for you is very much like what you described, so maybe there really is hardware already that can recognize a shitload of arbitrary sounds using practically no power.

And you aren't wrong, from page 2 of the article:

Amazon, for example, has previously confirmed that it uses stuff people say (and do) with Alexa for targeted ads (Amazon has long claimed that it doesn't sell customer data). But our devices are only expected to gather data on what we say when we ask them to listen to us.

Language really muddles things here. What counts as "listening"? In some sense a microphone not connected to anything is always "listening" but we don't call it that because the electrical impulses it generates don't go anywhere. Is a phone "listening" if it's just running that data through a routine that only recognizes a wake word? Does it make sense to use the same word for that as for live streaming data to a server?

Since when? I disable the camera through software and also use a makeshift lens cap attached to the phone case. Never once came across this. What phone are you using?

• What Phone manufacturer?
• What OS/ Version?
• When is that message displayed? When unlocking or in which app?
• What does the message say exactly?
• What mode of phone unlock is used?
• Got a screenshot of the message? Or even better a photo of the taped camera and phone with the message?

I'm skeptical of this, but I wouldn't put it past them either.

Just because you don't understand statistics and metadata analysis doesn't make it fake. And of course, since it's real, you can surely point to all the apps whose network traffic was monitored and all the voice data constantly being transmitted that was captured. Because surely in an era where many people pay for data, it'd be impossible to miss the constant audio stream coming from every one of these devices eating up your bandwidth cap.

But nah, "I feel this is true" is all we need. Even when the person who says it, and said it to advertise their product, admits they lied for sales.

Are they tracking you? You bet. If you think they're so unsophisticated that they need to literally listen to your every word instead of the millions of other data points you FREELY give away already, you just don't understand the tech and are fear mongering.

the company itself has admitted that their claims were exaggerated.

At the risk of being called a neckbeard:

Before Cox Media Group sent its statement, though, CMG's claims of collecting data on "casual conversations in real-time," as its blog stated, were questionable. CMG never explained how our devices would somehow be able to garner the computing and networking power necessary to record and send every conversation spoken within the device's range in "real-time," unbeknownst to the device's owner. The firm also never explained how it acquired the type of access that requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant. This is despite CMG's blog claiming that with Active Listening, advertisers would be able to know "the second someone in your area is concerned about mold in their closet," for example.

In other words, they were hyping up capabilities they don't have.

Are you familiar with Wireshark and network sniffing? Instead of just wondering, why not look for yourself what these devices are sending out? It's not hard, and it's not a secret.

I'm not scared of them, because I know exactly how they work and exactly what's going across my network at all times.

You love to see the angry little edit.

It was the admission that was the news. People know they are being gaslit so when someone finally admits they are gaslighting you you can and should make them pay. Problem with gaslighting is that you don’t have proof, but you know

have you actually read the article?