… No, but the truth is even scarier
Most of us experienced it before. You talked about something out loud, only for ads to appear on Facebook, Instagram or the web browser the day or even minutes after. It feels like your phone is monitoring your conversation and shows you the corresponding ads.
Could that be true?
Well, technically it is possible for apps and phones to secretly observe your microphone recordings. Many people do believe the modern myth and are certain that some personal ads can only come from bugging. Especially Facebook seems to be the centre of accusations.
But, all-clear. According to Facebook’s official statement in June 2016: „Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed“. So far, researchers have failed to find evidence against this statement (Fowler, 2019).
If Facebook does not listen – how do they know?
Well, Facebook does not need to spy on our conversations, because it already has all the data it needs to propose targeted advertising. In fact, the data we voluntarily share with Facebook (and many other apps) is more than sufficient, even without accessing our microphones (Here you can find out what Facebook knows about you).
There are many ways for Facebook to target us based on our released data, demographics and location. Also, many other websites or apps use Facebook plugins, login and widgets. With this Facebook can collect data on our web journey – what items we look at, what we click on, how much time we are spending reading, what products we put in our shopping cart, etc. Further, Facebook’s algorithm determines that if a friend with similar characteristics likes something, we might be equally interested in the product. Those tracking methods are so precise, that we have the impression that our phone is listening.
But, is your phone still snooping?
Indeed, a study of Northeastern University had some surprising and disturbing findings when investigating 17,260 popular Android apps. The researchers reveal several alarming privacy risks in the Android app ecosystem. According to the study, several apps were taking screenshots or recording videos of smartphone activity and shared that data with third parties in unexpected ways, without the permission of the user (Choffnes et al., 2018). Protecting us against this kind of spying seems impossible.
No, our phones are not listening to our conversations. But isn’t the truth even more disturbing?
What do you think? Did you also already have the feeling your phone was secretly snooping on you for advertising purposes? Do you mind?
Bibliography:
Choffnes, D., Lindorfer, M., Pan, E., Ren, J. & Wilson, C. (2018). Panoptispy: Characterizing Audio and Video Exfiltration from Android Applications. Proceedings on Privacy Enhancing Technologies 2018. 18 (4): 1–18.
Facebook. (2016). Facebook does not use your phone’s microphone for ads or news feed stories. [online] Facebook Newsroom. Available at: https://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones-microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/ [Accessed 29.09.2019].
Fowler, B. (2019). Is Your Smartphone Secretly Listening to You? It’s technically possible, but researchers and security experts say the answer is likely no. [online] Consumerreports.org. Available at: https://www.consumerreports.org/smartphones/is-your-smartphone-secretly-listening-to-you/ [Accessed 01.10.2019].
Graham, J. (2019). Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things. [online] USAtoday.com. Available at: https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/talkingtech/2019/06/27/does-facebook-listen-to-your-conversations/1478468001/ [Accessed 01.10.2019].
Tiffany, K. (2018). The perennial debate about whether your phone is secretly listening to you, explained. [online] Vox.com. Available at: https://www.vox.com/the-goods/2018/12/28/18158968/facebook-microphone-tapping-recording-instagram-ads [Accessed 30.09.2019].
Privacy such a big issue nowadays, I’ve never had this happen to me but have had friends who experienced seeing ads 30 seconds after he had mentioned a product. And indeed if your statement is true, taking screenshots and recording videos are actually so much more disturbing that “just” listening.
Regarding your question, I think a quote from Edward Snowden is quite fitting: “Arguing that you don’t care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don’t care about free speech because you have nothing to say”. It’s the problem at the macro level, where the shift of power to the these companies is unwanted.
Hi Yoonsung,
This quote is very suitable, thanks for sharing! It also fits very good with Lars’ comment below.
Wow! Very interesting topic!
Personally, I never heard of the study of Android apps leaking information on one’s phone usage and it actually really bothers me.
I would not mind my phone listening to me as long as it was about advertising purposes. But since we discuss politics or other sensitive topics with one other from time to time, it would actually be very intrusive and this kind of ‘freedom of speech’ must not be taken away. I wouldn’t say that the truth is disturbing, regarding the widgets and other algorithms. It’s no secret that AI and certain algorithms are highly advanced, so receiving FB ads based on other searches are not surprising at all.
However, I am still on the side of “believers” as I think that our phones are indeed listening. I mean, if I say hey Siri, my phone immediately knows I’m “summoning” it… I am sure there is an explanation to this. But if it can hear me say this, it can hear me say other things too… Very good read, thanks for sharing!
Hi Franciska, thanks for your comment!
Indeed, I was (and probably still are) at the “believers” side as well. That is what made me research about the topic for my blogpost.. I need to admit that when I found that facebook officially stated that they do not monitor microphone recordings, I was sceptical.
And: You made a good point with Siri!
However, one of the articles also emphasized: If it would be discovered that those corporations (facebook, apple, google, amazon, you name them..) would be spying on us using the microphone of our phones – this would be one of the biggest scandals in history. … But would we actually be surprised if it ever comes out?
Hi Theresa, interesting read! I completely agree with you about the feeling that sometimes our phones are listening to us. I was actually thinking about this the other week, when I was talking to someone about the possibility of hiring a venue somewhere in Rotterdam. Only minutes later, when I was scrolling through my Facebook, I saw several advertisements for venues. The first thing I thought was that my microphone had somehow picked up this conversation. But then I started thinking, maybe I had gotten similar advertisements before then, but just never paid attention to them because I wasn’t looking for something like that. Do you think maybe this could play a part as well?
Anyhow, did you maybe also find something on the Apple ecosystem? Does this work the same way as the Android system?
Hi Patricia! Thanks for your comment!
Indeed, I am certain that this will play a big part as well. The phenomenom is called selective perception.
Another “natural” reason could also be the following: you talk with another person about a specific pair of shoes. At home you have a look at shoe stores in your city on google maps, or you already had a glimpse at shoes on Zalando. The next day you get some ads for shoes on Instagram.
You directly blame that your phone was “listening” even though you gave all the clues yourself already the day earlier, without even noticing.
Unfortunately, the study was only concerning the Android ecosystem, and I could not find a similar study for the Apple ecosystem – Maybe this is a good sign for all iOS user?
Just like the microphone, sometimes I’ve been wondering about the cameras on the phone as well. On laptops it’s become quite common to use a cap in case the camera is turned on by an external party; yet this is not something you see on phones, despite most phones having two (or more!) cameras. Imagine how much data could be captured through the camera; emotional reactions to posts/advertisements, eye-tracking.
Hi Lars, that is an interesting, yet scary, thought!
I quickly googled and camera covers for phones do exist, but it is very uncommon.. I guess, convenience and aesthetics win in that case for most people.
Interesting read! Although I agree that Facebook is probably not listening to our conversations, I think that we should not be confident that our conversations are not listened to. Especially companies like Apple and Google allegedly do this for the purpose of improving their voice-recognition applications such as Google Home, and it is even suggested that ads are already targeted based on what we say. As to what extent this is fully true, I don’t know. I do know that I deactivated Siri for this reason.
Another issue is the amount of collected metadata. Metadata is data information that provides information about other data. Take WhatsApp for example. WhatsApp messages are end-to-end encrypted, which means that only you and the person you are communicating with can read the messages that are sent. Although WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, does not know what kind of messages or pictures you are sending, they do know who you are communicating with, when, for how long and how often. Consequently, even when you think you are not sharing information, metadata can still reveal enough information about you, your patterns and your personal information.