Conversation cleary monitored and not sure how

Eric

Eric

Mama's lil stinker
Joined
Aug 10, 2020
Posts
14,078
Solutions
18
Main Camera
Sony
Yesterday I picked my wife up from the airport and on the way home in the car we spent maybe a minute or two talking about a flat tire on her recently deceased father's motorcycle, I asked if he had an air compressor. It was just in passing and that was that. Here's what I'm seeing in Amazon today, these are specifically designed for motorcycles.


Greenshot 2025-03-21 09.26.31.png


Nobody googled it or anything else. This invasion of privacy is getting out of control, we have both turned off access to our mics for most apps in the phone so it's hard to know how they picked it up.
 
casperes1996 said:
Creepy. What’s the car? Could it be part of the tracking?

Any Meta apps with mic access like messenger?
Click to expand...
Nearly all of mine are turned off but I'll have to double check with my wife, we did turn most of hers off previously too though. The only other thing is the BMW with CarPlay. Something was clearly listening though, the targeting doesn't get much more blatant than this.
 
We live in mic's environment. Our phones are listening to us every second, sniffing for keywords, all the time. The "AI" architecture (really just basic computer architecture but more sophisticated) is monitoring us constantly – you can tell because of how inane it is, the way it obviously converges toward what you have been discussing instead of making more subtle, elaborate inferences.
 
It’s probably buried in one of the T&Cs that any one of those apps can use the mic even while it is selected off for ”learning purposes”. I’d also think that you would have to opt out of passing your data to third parties or partners. All of which probably either renders the app useless or they ave an addendum to an update that says they can whatever the f**k they want to do.

We waived our rights to privacy a long time ago all in the name of convenience and immediacy.
 
rdrr said:
It’s probably buried in one of the T&Cs that any one of those apps can use the mic even while it is selected off for ”learning purposes”. I’d also think that you would have to opt out of passing your data to third parties or partners. All of which probably either renders the app useless or they ave an addendum to an update that says they can whatever the f**k they want to do.
Click to expand...

The problem is that if it is iOS, then apps can't get access to the mic without the user being able to disable it at the system level. Android is much the same on recent versions. So if this is from an iOS device, then it either means:

A) Some app is listening in, and you can disable it at the system level.
B) Apple is selling Siri-related audio captures (which they say they don't, and that the mic only listens for the trigger phrase).
C) The car itself is the culprit and the location data from the car got tied to other identifiers (IP address) when you parked.

EDIT: That said, even just one bad actor that was enabled on either phone would be enough to get these ads, since you and your wife would get tied to the same IP address at home.
 
Nycturne said:
The problem is that if it is iOS, then apps can't get access to the mic without the user being able to disable it at the system level. Android is much the same on recent versions. So if this is from an iOS device, then it either means:

A) Some app is listening in, and you can disable it at the system level.
B) Apple is selling Siri-related audio captures (which they say they don't, and that the mic only listens for the trigger phrase).
C) The car itself is the culprit and the location data from the car got tied to other identifiers (IP address) when you parked.

EDIT: That said, even just one bad actor that was enabled on either phone would be enough to get these ads, since you and your wife would get tied to the same IP address at home.
Click to expand...
I vote C
 
The same thing happened with beef ribs, which I've been talking to my wife about for the last couple of weeks. Again, never looking it up or anything. So yesterday we looked and she still had 4 or 5 apps using her mic and we shut them all off, hope this makes a difference because it does feel like a huge invasion of privacy when you don't know where it's coming from.
 
Eric said:
The same thing happened with beef ribs, which I've been talking to my wife about for the last couple of weeks. Again, never looking it up or anything. So yesterday we looked and she still had 4 or 5 apps using her mic and we shut them all off, hope this makes a difference because it does feel like a huge invasion of privacy when you don't know where it's coming from.
Click to expand...

Are you willing to name and shame those apps?
 
Do not install meta apps. Messenger requests mic access for example. Also if you’ve been in proximity or conversation with someone who has mic enabled or the apps installled, guess what?
 
I have a slipping rib that pops out every now and then, yesterday it happened while brushing my dog and I was talking to my wife about how I will likely need to go see a chiropractor, never looking it up or anything. This morning I woke up to a DM on my Instagram from a local chiropractor with a personalized invite to come to their facility and receive free treatment in exchange for a post.

I get messages like this all the time so it's not uncommon (though I never accept) but this is way too coincidental so I looked at my mic settings in security and it was turned on for Instagram, I originally had it off a while back but forgot to do it again after reinstalling the app. Man, all I can say is absolutely nothing is sacred.
 
Eric said:
because it does feel like a huge invasion of privacy when you don't know where it's coming from.
Click to expand...

It is getting to the point where if you want to have a serious conversation about something, say a legal matter, you are going to have to go out in the middle of a field and leave your phones in the car.
 
Eric said:
I have a slipping rib that pops out every now and then, yesterday it happened while brushing my dog and I was talking to my wife about how I will likely need to go see a chiropractor, never looking it up or anything. This morning I woke up to a DM on my Instagram from a local chiropractor with a personalized invite to come to their facility and receive free treatment in exchange for a post.

I get messages like this all the time so it's not uncommon (though I never accept) but this is way too coincidental so I looked at my mic settings in security and it was turned on for Instagram, I originally had it off a while back but forgot to do it again after reinstalling the app. Man, all I can say is absolutely nothing is sacred.
Click to expand...
Sorry for your rib.
At this point, after turning off all the spyware..I would try to come up with something fake , saying it loud
and see if it happens again
 
I went to REI and ended up what I later found was a sun hoodie. I did not look online. we went to the beach and wearing them I took a selfie of the wife and I with those hoodies and a brand of pants you see of Facebook. well maybe a hour later I get ad's for sun hoodies and the first one was from the brand of my pants. I never said anything aboutthem on the post.
 
Herdfan said:
It is getting to the point where if you want to have a serious conversation about something, say a legal matter, you are going to have to go out in the middle of a field and leave your phones in the car.
Click to expand...

It's also getting to the point where I don't install any social media apps for reasons of

  • privacy invasion
  • battery drain

But, of course they are enshittifying the web version as much as possible on mobile to force you to install the app... there's no reason any of these platforms can't just run in a web browser outside of them wanting to be able to use your hardware to do things you do not explicitly ask them to do, WHEN you want them to do it.
 
A little less than 20 years ago, a colleague of a friend of mine was working on a system that could scrape data from retailers and pair that with online information to link purchases back to individuals and form even more detailed advertising profiles. According to him it wasn’t that hard to do. Systems like Apple Pay might make it harder (CC numbers and info being hidden), but even then there are ways like rewards programs and the like that stores can link you to your purchases and an online profile.

This isn’t to say that social media isn’t a privacy nightmare and that you shouldn’t be careful about you say around mics. Especially some of the examples here didn’t even involve a purchase. But there are other avenues that they can use to figure out what you’ve bought and where even if offline. I would imagine we’d all be pretty horrified by just how much is known about us even from putatively offline sources.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top