A little creepy

2,301 Views | 24 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by JSKolache
AGinHI
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Warning-this is not a cool story. It's not entertaining. These are the events of the day.

Early this morning I took my oldest son to a wrestling meet (damn thing took ten hours). He weighed in at 6:30 a.m. and then we headed out to get breakfast. We stopped at a bagel shop and after ordering I turned to sit and found him standing and staring in fascination at a framed picture of Lunch Atop a Skyscraper hanging right over our table. Phone in hand, I say your great grandfather carried steel girders and worked on buildings. I was going to look the picture up on my phone so he could see similar images, but decided not to.

It's now around 1 p.m.-I've watched my son wrestle for 6 minutes with more matches to go-and I pull out my phone, again, to bide the time. Previously, I watched the Ags versus Alabama and best of the X Games on ESPN, in addition to regularly scrolling through the TexAgs forums and texting my wife about our son as she responds with scores and opinions on our middle child who is simultaneously competing in gymnastics.

Well, back to TexAgs I go. After again browsing the forums I open the home page of my YouTube app which offers consistent recommendations based on my subscriptions and browsing history: gaming videos, The Pulse, some politics, some philosophy, a little comedy, and right smack dab in the middle of my video recommendations is this



Wow. Just what I was looking for.
“We don't have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.”

-Milton Friedman
Raptor
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I was hoping this story would end with your great granddad being one of the guys in the iconic photo.
This post is for Cretaceous Level Subscribers only.

AGinHI
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Sorry
“We don't have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.”

-Milton Friedman
CrottyKid
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Your phone listens to you. You have given it permission to do so.
boy09
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Googling stuff has become so second nature to me, I don't even think about it most of the time. Then the ads start popping up. My first reaction is "What the hell, I didn't even....". But more often then not, I did. I did google whatever the thing was without even thinking about it..

Also, you're phone is most likely listening, so there's that...
AGinHI
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boy09 said:

Googling stuff has become so second nature to me, I don't even think about it most of the time. Then the ads start popping up. My first reaction is "What the hell, I didn't even....". But more often then not, I did. I did google whatever the thing was without even thinking about it..

That's why I gave a detailed, albeit boring, account of my day. How I described it is how it happened. What I said. What I did. What I searched on my phone.

Quote:

Also, you're phone is most likely listening, so there's that...

I find it a little unnerving.

Is that just me?
“We don't have a government of the people, by the people, for the people. We have government of the people, by the bureaucrats, for the bureaucrats.”

-Milton Friedman
BQRyno
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Not just you. Had a very similar conversation the other day about how I wish I knew what exactly I accepted that allows my phone to listen to everything I say.
C@LAg
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Sine poena nulla lex.
jopatura
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BQRyno said:

Not just you. Had a very similar conversation the other day about how I wish I knew what exactly I accepted that allows my phone to listen to everything I say.


It's also buried in a lot of apps. Anything you can talk to (camera, hand-free dictation, etc) always has the microphone on. Once one company (primarily Facebook or Google) gets ahold of that information it gets bundled with your profile behind the scenes to build out your private panel of advertisements.
BQRyno
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That's an interesting thought. Never thought of them using access to camera or talk to text to get access to the mic, but it makes sense. All just makes me think of the Human Cent-iPad episode of South Park.
mhayden
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This idea that your phone is constantly listening to you without being prompted and able to parse your conversations and push you advertising based on it within a short time-frame is not grounded in any kind of reality with our current bandwidth infrastructure.

It's one part cognitive bias, another part not realizing that it's pulling this data from your email/searches/browsing-history/private-messages/etc...

BQRyno
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See, I've heard that, but I have also had very specific advertising based on something obscure that I have only talked about once in years, similar to the op. I'm talking about things so obscure that if they had popped up before, I would have noticed because it would have seemed odd. Also, when stuff shows up at the very top, it makes me suspicious. I think big data is more capable then you give them credit for.
jopatura
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free_mhayden said:

This idea that your phone is constantly listening to you without being prompted and able to parse your conversations and push you advertising based on it within a short time-frame is not grounded in any kind of reality with our current bandwidth infrastructure.

It's one part cognitive bias, another part not realizing that it's pulling this data from your email/searches/browsing-history/private-messages/etc...




There have been very specific conversations I have had, usually with my other mom friends at play dates when we are discussing very specific products by name, that will show up in my Facebook advertisements later that afternoon. Yes my advertising analytics know I'm a mom but even that's a stretch to me.

In addition I went through a period where I shut off every app's access to the microphone and the targeted stuff mostly went away. It's filtered back since then, but there are some apps that I do use all the features on.
mhayden
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jopatura said:

free_mhayden said:

This idea that your phone is constantly listening to you without being prompted and able to parse your conversations and push you advertising based on it within a short time-frame is not grounded in any kind of reality with our current bandwidth infrastructure.

It's one part cognitive bias, another part not realizing that it's pulling this data from your email/searches/browsing-history/private-messages/etc...




There have been very specific conversations I have had, usually with my other mom friends at play dates when we are discussing very specific products by name, that will show up in my Facebook advertisements later that afternoon. Yes my advertising analytics know I'm a mom but even that's a stretch to me.

In addition I went through a period where I shut off every app's access to the microphone and the targeted stuff mostly went away. It's filtered back since then, but there are some apps that I do use all the features on.

Do you think those other mom friends at play dates have google searched, facebook messaged, texted or emailed about those products?

The ability to link those mom's searches to you (via facebook friendship, call/text logs, or just common location services) and push that advertising to you as well is FAR more likely than you microphone constantly listening to your conversations.

Now, could some app be instructed to listen to specific keyword triggers and push advertising based off of that? Yes... But even that requires a lot of processing and would very rarely be heard clearly enough in the environment you are in to capture, process and feed you advertising shortly thereafter. And that's not even jumping into the legal/security issues involved for "always on" monitoring (even buried in some TOS that you agreed to).

Don't get me wrong, big data is spying -- but 9 times outta 10 it's picking up on one of the other hundreds of data points you give it on a daily basis.
Civen
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AG
With your location data, they know you were at the bagel shop. There's probably a decent correlation between people who visit that bagel shop and searching for info on that picture. So the ad system tossed that video out there for you, assuming that since you were at the shop that picture might be floating around in your subconscious and might lead to a click.

This, to me, sounds a lot more possible than the ever-on mic.
DAM
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There was a Reply All episode addressing this and they concluded what a lot of the companies are saying that they are not actively listening. The other thing they said is that the algos crunching data about you are incredibly smart and good, so that's why it feels like they are spying on you.

As to this specific incident with the picture I have to assume it was more than likely the following. First, your phone pinged your location to a specific store. Second, many other people have been at that store and have taken pictures or Googled some picture they saw on the wall. Thus advertising just had to match your taste with the taste of people in that store and now you have your ad.

dam
rbcs_2
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Quote:

Do you think those other mom friends at play dates have google searched, facebook messaged, texted or emailed about those products?

The ability to link those mom's searches to you (via facebook friendship, call/text logs, or just common location services) and push that advertising to you as well is FAR more likely than you microphone constantly listening to your conversations.
A coworker of mine did this exact test when he got a new phone a couple of years ago. Installed the FB app and then mentioned a product by name a few times (a product he claimed he'd never talked about before). A few hours later ads started showing up.

Now the possibility exists that he was pranking us, but seeing how none of us are really FB users that would be an odd prank.
Civen
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DAM said:

There was a Reply All episode addressing this and they concluded what a lot of the companies are saying that they are not actively listening. The other thing they said is that the algos crunching data about you are incredibly smart and good, so that's why it feels like they are spying on you.

As to this specific incident with the picture I have to assume it was more than likely the following. First, your phone pinged your location to a specific store. Second, many other people have been at that store and have taken pictures or Googled some picture they saw on the wall. Thus advertising just had to match your taste with the taste of people in that store and now you have your ad.

dam
I beat you explanation by a few seconds :P
mhayden
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rbcs_2 said:

Quote:

Do you think those other mom friends at play dates have google searched, facebook messaged, texted or emailed about those products?

The ability to link those mom's searches to you (via facebook friendship, call/text logs, or just common location services) and push that advertising to you as well is FAR more likely than you microphone constantly listening to your conversations.
A coworker of mine did this exact test when he got a new phone a couple of years ago. Installed the FB app and then mentioned a product by name a few times (a product he claimed he'd never talked about before). A few hours later ads started showing up.

Now the possibility exists that he was pranking us, but seeing how none of us are really FB users that would be an odd prank.

You hear all kinds of anecdotal evidence that the phones are listening to everything.

Yet with something that would be relatively easy to prove with a large scale test like you mentioned, we've seen no damning evidence outside of few small-time blogs and youtube channels looking for exposure.

If your phone was recording everything you were saying and distributing it to a server there would be very telltale signs via data monitoring.

If your phone was recording everything you were saying and parsing it for keywords locally there would be very telltale signs via resource monitoring.

In a world where the powers-that-be are monitoring our every discussion, it's happening on the telco side of things -- not on your phone. And in the (probably very likely) event that it is happening, it's the government sifting through that data, not Gerbers Baby Food.

Reality is most people simply don't grasp how many data points we give big data each and every day.

Civen
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rbcs_2 said:

Quote:

Do you think those other mom friends at play dates have google searched, facebook messaged, texted or emailed about those products?

The ability to link those mom's searches to you (via facebook friendship, call/text logs, or just common location services) and push that advertising to you as well is FAR more likely than you microphone constantly listening to your conversations.
A coworker of mine did this exact test when he got a new phone a couple of years ago. Installed the FB app and then mentioned a product by name a few times (a product he claimed he'd never talked about before). A few hours later ads started showing up.

Now the possibility exists that he was pranking us, but seeing how none of us are really FB users that would be an odd prank.
If he was on a WiFi network, and someone else on the same network searched for the product mentioned, that's enough to get tagged for ads. It happens all the time for me at home. Search for something on one phone, get ads on another. I'm not saying this was exactly what happened, but the data agencies use anything they can get their hands on.
Civen
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free_mhayden said:

Reality is most people simply don't grasp how many data points we give big data each and every day.
This is the issue, really.

Public sentiment seems to be increasingly against big data, and if this kind of info collection makes you uneasy look into supporting groups that advocate for online privacy. Europe had the right idea with the GDPR, and it'd be nice if we could get the US to follow suit.

www.eff.org
www.epic.org
www.digitalprivacyalliance.org
WES2006AG
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Like has already been mentioned most people who think their phone is listening to them just don't understand how much data these big data companies have on you. They know who you are, where you go, who you interact with, what you buy and so on.

Even if you don't use FB they have a profile on you.
rbcs_2
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free_mhayden said:

rbcs_2 said:

Quote:

Do you think those other mom friends at play dates have google searched, facebook messaged, texted or emailed about those products?

The ability to link those mom's searches to you (via facebook friendship, call/text logs, or just common location services) and push that advertising to you as well is FAR more likely than you microphone constantly listening to your conversations.
A coworker of mine did this exact test when he got a new phone a couple of years ago. Installed the FB app and then mentioned a product by name a few times (a product he claimed he'd never talked about before). A few hours later ads started showing up.

Now the possibility exists that he was pranking us, but seeing how none of us are really FB users that would be an odd prank.

You hear all kinds of anecdotal evidence that the phones are listening to everything.

Yet with something that would be relatively easy to prove with a large scale test like you mentioned, we've seen no damning evidence outside of few small-time blogs and youtube channels looking for exposure.

If your phone was recording everything you were saying and distributing it to a server there would be very telltale signs via data monitoring.

If your phone was recording everything you were saying and parsing it for keywords locally there would be very telltale signs via resource monitoring.

In a world where the powers-that-be are monitoring our every discussion, it's happening on the telco side of things -- not on your phone. And in the (probably very likely) event that it is happening, it's the government sifting through that data, not Gerbers Baby Food.

Reality is most people simply don't grasp how many data points we give big data each and every day.


I tend to agree for the most part. Sending all voice data to a server would be the absolute worst strategy. The voice would need to be transcribed locally and then scrubbed. I don't know how taxing that is on resources. Phones are certainly capable, but to just constantly transcribe all voice? Not likely, at least not without being noticed.

There are a ton of code examples of voice processing but not really finding anything about resource usage.
Saxsoon
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jopatura said:

free_mhayden said:

This idea that your phone is constantly listening to you without being prompted and able to parse your conversations and push you advertising based on it within a short time-frame is not grounded in any kind of reality with our current bandwidth infrastructure.

It's one part cognitive bias, another part not realizing that it's pulling this data from your email/searches/browsing-history/private-messages/etc...




There have been very specific conversations I have had, usually with my other mom friends at play dates when we are discussing very specific products by name, that will show up in my Facebook advertisements later that afternoon. Yes my advertising analytics know I'm a mom but even that's a stretch to me.

In addition I went through a period where I shut off every app's access to the microphone and the targeted stuff mostly went away. It's filtered back since then, but there are some apps that I do use all the features on.


There was an episode of the replyall podcast about this. The came to the conclusion they most likely aren't listening in. What they have taken the leap on more likely than not is proximity based ads. I.E. if your friend looks up X and they see you are together at an event or check in at a dinner, etc, it might then Start to send you ads based on that because maybe you will buy it for that friend or because you might share similar interests.
Saxsoon
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Civen said:

DAM said:

There was a Reply All episode addressing this and they concluded what a lot of the companies are saying that they are not actively listening. The other thing they said is that the algos crunching data about you are incredibly smart and good, so that's why it feels like they are spying on you.

As to this specific incident with the picture I have to assume it was more than likely the following. First, your phone pinged your location to a specific store. Second, many other people have been at that store and have taken pictures or Googled some picture they saw on the wall. Thus advertising just had to match your taste with the taste of people in that store and now you have your ad.

dam
I beat you explanation by a few seconds :P

Ah damn you both beat me to it, oh well gonna leave it up
JSKolache
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CrottyKid said:

Your phone listens to you. You have given it permission to do so.
Also NSA, .ru, and ChiComs. So there's that, which is nice.
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