Conversation cleary monitored and not sure how

diamond.g said:
Like packet sniffing/tracing?
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No; Like they actually opened "server" ports on localhost (not port 80; I forget which ports) that their Meta Pixel tracking system would send and receive data from on the web to send tracking details from every website you visit to your Meta apps and vice versa; Your Facebook profile details to all websites you visited. Didn't matter if you had all cookies disabled on the web and strong privacy settings enabled. As soon as the report detailing the practice was published they stopped doing it
 
casperes1996 said:
No; Like they actually opened "server" ports on localhost (not port 80; I forget which ports) that their Meta Pixel tracking system would send and receive data from on the web to send tracking details from every website you visit to your Meta apps and vice versa; Your Facebook profile details to all websites you visited. Didn't matter if you had all cookies disabled on the web and strong privacy settings enabled. As soon as the report detailing the practice was published they stopped doing it
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That is wild.
 
casperes1996 said:
No; Like they actually opened "server" ports on localhost (not port 80; I forget which ports) that their Meta Pixel tracking system would send and receive data from on the web to send tracking details from every website you visit to your Meta apps and vice versa; Your Facebook profile details to all websites you visited. Didn't matter if you had all cookies disabled on the web and strong privacy settings enabled. As soon as the report detailing the practice was published they stopped doing it
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Unbelievable, worthy of a class action.
 
Happened again tonight, Portlandia displayed on the Netflix menu and I spoke it out loud to my wife. Two hours later I'm getting a push to follow the show on my Instagram feed, makes it seem like that's the culprit.

The list of apps running the mic between her phone and mine were:

Google Home
Nest
Instagram
Shazam
TikTok

And the Alexa was also listening.
 
Eric said:
And the Alexa was also listening.
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I had the very first FireTV. At some point I used an old Xbox 360 controller instead of the remote (the old FireTV still had an USB port), because I didn't want to replace the batteries and I've only used the voice search function once and it didn't work properly.
When that FireTV became too old and began acting up, I thought of getting a new one. Then I found out that the new FireTV has the microphone in the main unit instead of the remote. Since I didn't want a permanent bug in my living room, I switched to Apple TV instead (apart from the fact that I miss SmartTube, I never regretted that decision).

The only occurance where I had this strange behavior, was when discussing specific topics with someone, while they had their Samsung phone out (hell knows what was running on the phone). Later at home, Youtube showed me videos with those topics.
In that case I suspect Google, because who else could link my Youtube account to my voice? (And I don't even upload videos, I just use the account to subscribe to channels.)
 
It is like a catch 22, we are more likely to buy the things we are interested in (and they get paid more) but are also turned off by the tracking to discover said interesting things by advertisers.
 
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.
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Exactly, at first I didn't think it was such a big deal and now it feels like big brother is all over my house, a total invasion of privacy. I mean if they can nail the intricacies of what you're saying for ads, think about all the other things one might say in the comfort of their own homes.

diamond.g said:
It is like a catch 22, we are more likely to buy the things we are interested in (and they get paid more) but are also turned off by the tracking to discover said interesting things by advertisers.
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The older I get the less I care about new tech at the expense of my personal privacy.
 
Eric said:
Exactly, at first I didn't think it was such a big deal and now it feels like big brother is all over my house, a total invasion of privacy. I mean if they can nail the intricacies of what you're saying for ads, think about all the other things one might say in the comfort discomfort of their own homes.
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Fixed it for the new normal.
 
There's also a very common technique used by set-top boxes and even built into the TVs themselves, where they use computer vision on the content on screen to figure out what you're watching even if they don't have that information in the signal itself for advertising purposes
 
Eric said:
Exactly, at first I didn't think it was such a big deal and now it feels like big brother is all over my house, a total invasion of privacy.
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I am a little surprised that Apple, who touts privacy in ads, doesn’t put a stop to this on the device level.
 
Herdfan said:
I am a little surprised that Apple, who touts privacy in ads, doesn’t put a stop to this on the device level.
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I don't really see how that could feasibly be done - They do lock down a lot of things in the name of privacy, but at some point you either give developers the tools to make apps, and thus also the tools to develop tracking, or you don't have apps at all. If there's an API to make network requests; There's ways of tracking
 
casperes1996 said:
I don't really see how that could feasibly be done - They do lock down a lot of things in the name of privacy, but at some point you either give developers the tools to make apps, and thus also the tools to develop tracking, or you don't have apps at all. If there's an API to make network requests; There's ways of tracking
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Agreed. Mostly what you can do, Apple has been doing. Require user permission to access device resources (like the microphone, location, etc). The improvements would be to add more granular controls to microphone like they do for for location (fully block background access unless the user allows it).

But the other trend is to ask for access for one reason, and then use it for another while you have it. This was made worse by early lack of background APIs for iOS, making it so that apps would actually use GPS access to trigger background activity. This is akin to Doordash asking for notifications to let you know about your orders, and then spamming you around meal times (or times when you normally order) trying to get you to use DoorDash more often.

Eric said:
Google Home
Nest
Instagram
Shazam
TikTok

And the Alexa was also listening.
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Instagram has been known to listen in the background, and I don't trust any of the red items to not abuse microphone access. Even in the case of TikTok where someone could record a clip in the app to then post, I'd rather record it elsewhere first.

Not sure why Nest would need it either, unless you want to use voice commands. But the only app on this list that I would generally allow access to my microphone is Shazam, because it's part of the core app behavior.
 
casperes1996 said:
There's also a very common technique used by set-top boxes and even built into the TVs themselves, where they use computer vision on the content on screen to figure out what you're watching even if they don't have that information in the signal itself for advertising purposes
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Not surprised, makes me glad I just keep my TV disconnected from the network.
 
Renzatic said:
We created Big Brother not to spy on us, but to sell us toasters more efficiently.
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And just think of all the conversation they listen to just to sift out keywords for advertising, every word you say is recorded, tagged, and archived.
 
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