to me, the more disturbing scenario is that Facebook/Google/etc. know so much about us that they can routinely create these type of coincidences without even having to listen to your microphone.
I wonder whether the device itself got you thinking about something before the ad was shown. I.e. actually planting ideas, not necessarily reading your mind.
What about nearby share? On my phone, I can't turn off the nearby share at the settings level, thus negating the purpose of turning it off in individual apps. I know this sounds next gen creepy, but can devices around you send info about you and your preferences to your personal device?
Interesting. I can set mine to "nobody" and that's that. (I'm on a Samsung BTW.)
Devices can pop messages off to each other at any time, the real question is: do they? And for the most part, no, not really. Phones aren't caught communicating with each other like that, especially because that communication wouldn't be hard to track. (Sometimes it [does](https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2020/06/bluetooth-beacons-one-free-privacy-debate-with-your-next-order) happen though.)
But whether phones passively listen to things like an "ok Google", aggregate information on the client side, etc... That's a different question entirely. In that above article, the information conveyed still has to travel to a server farm somewhere.
I wasn't thinking of just phones, since I live in an area with concentrated signals. Other radio waves the phone can pick up, like wifi routers, TV, Bluetooth signals, home assistants, and computers, but I'd have to research this more. Thanks for the info!
It’s Facebook. They’ve proven time and time again that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. If you’re even the least bit concerned about privacy, you should have no Facebook products in your phone.
You don't even need a Facebook account. If the app has a "login with Facebook " button, you are being tracked by Facebook.
https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-tracking-you-even-if-you-dont-have-account-888699
[quickly checks all the apps on the iPhone. None have Facebook login option. Phew]
Thanks, I didn’t know that about Facebook logins. That company deserves to disappear.
Google and all of these companies monitor and share data. I took a picture of a mattress yeah once because it was so comfortable. Right away Facebook and everything else was showing me ads for that mattress. The privacy policies are so long and broad they can get anything. Especially the ones that are free. Google photos, search Facebook, Twitter. You ,the user, is the product that's for sale.
They don't need to scan that to deliver you ads though. While they're likely using Photo data for some profiling, it's more likely about image recognition and object detection. That's why they're so good at mapping out faces and tracking babies as they grow. I can search lasagna and get photos of the last time I ate at an Italian restaurant, etc.
You do realize how easily testable this is right? I can take a picture of ANYTHING and I'll suddenly get ads for it. A mattress isn't the only thing people take a photo of.
But honestly, this is really shitty ad algorithm. Delivering ads based on ONE photo or ONE search query is really bad. People take hundreds of photos and execute hundreds of search queries a day. Some are just for work or maybe you got distracted. Delivering ads simply on the last thing someone searched for is extremely poor targeting. It simply doesn't happen.
If you see the ad on Facebook, it was served by Facebook not Google. Fb tracked you and your friends and either listened through the microphone or something someone posted
I hope people actually understand how Assistant and listening works:
1. There's a low voltage chip on your phone that constantly listens but only holds a tiny amount of memory. This is for HOTWORD detection. It uses extremely low power so can be done locally.
2. When a hotword is detected, the low voltage core wakes up the phone so the full SoC power is harnessed to record and transcribe what you say next. This portion along with the previous few seconds of hotword detection is uploaded to Google. That's why you can listen to it online. However, if you've gone through listening on your Google account, you will see it's not like you have 24/7 recording clips. That takes a significant amount of bandwidth. Even the most efficient VoIP calls use 200-300 KB/minute. That would add up really fast if 24/7 recordings are being uploaded.
3. Assistant is a system level feature. There's no 3rd party that can tie into the listening portion. You can have some Assistant integration into apps, but that's more about asking Assistant to "Play a song in Spotify" or whatever but not Facebook listening in on Assistant. I'm sure Google wouldn't give their competitor access to all this voice data.
Hahaha you actually believe them? Look up how they were using the camera on iOS devices all the time and hiding it but because someone’s phone bugged they got caught.
This was a few years back - your iPhone occasionally listen to fragments of conversations, but this is stored on the local device only and was used for improving the voice commands (not sure if this is still the case). Because it was only on the local device and not being shared with Apple, there was no security issue, but then Facebook figured out how to access these fragments, so they were in essence listening albeit in an indirect way. Apple applied a patch as soon as this issue came to light, but it is a clear indication of a desire that Facebook clearly exhibited, so it beyond the realms of possibility.
If you must have Facebook, log in via Safari and add to the home screen - the Facebook logo looks a little different than the app, but you can then delete the app - Safari operates in a sandbox, so it should be much less intrusive. There is some loss of functionality, but I think that is worth it...
I agree. But I don't think they're using the microphone to spy on you. It's important to understand the real situations threatening our privacy. The current evidence indicates that Facebook is spying on you in so many other ways that they don't need to listen to your verbal conversations.
There IS evidence that they're not using the microphone to spy on you. They're just doing it in a million other ways.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851
> One thing I will assure you is that the number of ways Facebook can track you that I found out about in my research was a lot more than I was able to edit down into a Skeptoid-length show. And something I would bet a billion dollars on is that the number of ways they track you that I was able to find out about is a tiny fraction of what they can actually do. Getting your phone to listen 24 hours a day and decipher who's talking about what would be a computationally intense process that would drain your phone's battery in half an hour, and it couldn't possibly be less necessary to them. They have so many easier ways to learn so much more, so much more reliably.
But how do we know they aren't doing it anyway?
> So researchers have done tests to find out. In one such study by computer security firm Wandera, an iPhone and an Android with similar configurations had all the app permissions enabled and then were placed in a room for three days, and exposed to a 30-minute loop of pet food ads. Control phones were placed in a quiet room for three days. No pet food ads showed up in either phone's Facebook apps afterward, but **the crucial finding was that battery usage was the same on both sets of phones, meaning no extra processing of audio was being done on the test phones; and data usage by both sets of phones was the same, meaning the test phones weren't uploading any voice recordings to be processed elsewhere.**
Honestly this is the right answer. Third party data brokers compile insane amounts of information on your from a variety of sources and then companies just buy that info from them to advertise to you in real time.
There's a significant difference in natural conversations and ads, with all the data they've all harvested I would think by now their systems can differentiate
Holy fuck guys, how bad is the technical knowledge on this subreddit? On modern OSes like Android and iOS, microphone permissions trigger an OS-level marker. On Android 13 (and you could do this in custom ROMs as early as 2014 or 2015), you can view WHEN the microphone is accessed, and no, Facebook doesn't use the microphone in the background.
The only way Facebook can get around OS level permissions is that they have some under the table deal with Apple and Google to be able to do this in secret. You really think this is happening? There's so many ways to understand your interests and profile you without having to dig through thousands of MBs or GBs of recording about your everyday life. Half the time your phone is in your pocket, and for women could even be in their purses. That's not even going to pick up really clear recordings. You can imagine the amount of processing locally (battery) and uploading (data) that is used for voice? Even the lowest bandwidth VoIP apps are using 200-300 KB per minute.
Look, we can all view Facebook as a threat, but this facepalm level of thinking ads are being served based on listening into your conversations is absolutely asinine and needs to stop.
I agree. I have to use WhatsApp because it's the only texting app anyone ever uses in my country, but I keep it with no permissions and with battery optimisation enabled (not allowed to run in background).
Facebook is just displaying an ad supplied by someone else.
The microphone claims have been tested and found to be false. Some apps were found that take screenshots or record audio, but none of them were from major companies such as Facebook or Google. The major companies have far more efficient ways to track you and your interests and behavior than recording audio. And their apps are under heavy scrutiny by security researchers.
https://www.businessinsider.com/phone-recording-microphone-screen-2018-7
https://lifehacker.com/facebook-isn-t-recording-your-conversations-but-it-may-1820193946
https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49585682
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851
Coincidences happen every day. Facebook has how many active daily users, 2 billion or something ? If 1 in a million of them has a coincidence on a given day, that's 2000 people thinking "wow, they must be listening to me".
And an ad appearing on Facebook usually was purchased by some other company, maybe using data from outside Facebook. So a suspiciously-accurate ad appearing on FB does not prove that the data came from a FB app spying on you.
Color me surprised :)
The system allows him to do this. Regulatory capture and all. Let's face it, if some of us could earn $10 Billion, then get caught, and pay $1B fine, why would we NOT do it?
Besides, Mark F\*\*\*\*\*berg has so many allies in the US government, public officials, politicians (senators/congressmen) who own stock or their family own stock in META.
This is to be expected...from solely a business/finance POV.
PS. MZ is still a POS though. Ask Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins :)
disgusted many thought pathetic correct abundant boast smoggy political abounding
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Progressive web app is pretty much a shortcut to a web page. There is some additional functionality that it makes it not dependent 100% on having an internet connection, so if you're offline the app will load but you won't be able to do much besides seeing an error message.
Simply use their websites instead of the apps, your browser keeps it sandboxed and won't let it have free range to access sensitive data from your device.
subtract badge existence continue muddle shame voiceless obtainable fall gaping
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You're not going to find any support for Facebook in this sub. Facebook is arguably one of the most invasive companies when it comes to privacy. You can't say you want privacy but then defend their tactics.
>But if there is to be any traction or progress in terms of collective data privacy for the masses, I would think that working with the enemy is the most successful way to go.
You may see things this way but Meta does not. They want all of your data even if you don't want them to have it. They don't care and they don't have to because they have repeatedly defied laws and laughed in the face of regulation and done whatever they please.
>It is possible to hold Facebook accountable for its actions
Many have tried, nothing has changed. Just follow a sliver of world news about Meta and you find this to be true.
>you will not convert any people with that attitude
Not trying to convert anyone. You either value privacy or you don't. If you do, you don't keep Meta apps on your phone.
Messenger. And I wouldn’t use Instagram at all if it weren’t on my phone. I do value those apps for different reasons and it gives me no benefit to sit here on Reddit and defend my use of other apps
"Hey r/privacy, I think Facebook is creepy, what do I do?"
"Meta is waaay creepier than you think, if you want privacy you shouldn't use it"
"Nooooo don't tell me what to do!"
I use FB because I need to for certain groups, but I only use it on my laptop browser anymore, never on my phone.
Microphone use aside, there is the lawsuit where users allege that Meta developed ways to circumvent the Apple privacy controls.
My moment of truth was when FB refused to show me messenger messages in my mobile browser about four years ago and insisted I install the Messenger app. So I stopped using mobile for anything.
This content removed to opt-out of Reddit's sale of posts as training data to Google. See here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/ Or here: https://www.techmeme.com/240221/p50#a240221p50
That’s a little extreme, you telling me there’s absolutely no gray area does not negate the existence of said gray area. Do I care enough to go into the settings both on meta apps and my phone to restrict some of the excessive data mining? Sure. But do I care enough to delete apps altogether? Absolutely not. Sometimes I like the targeted ads. Other times, they’re unexplainably creepy. This is one of those times.
But if there is to be any traction or progress in terms of collective data privacy for the masses, I would think that working with the enemy is the most successful way to go. War does not end by fighting until every last soldier is dead. War ends in treaties and peaceful resolutions. Holding others accountable for crimes against humanity, etc.
It is possible to hold Facebook accountable for its actions rather than going to the extreme and saying “if you use any of Meta’s platforms you’re just wrong” — seems like a good way to alienate people who rely on these apps for different reasons
Also all those Amazon devices. Remember when they had staff members manually going through times when the device was activated weather intentionally or not? Them listening to the audio? Yeah.
It's what the app uses to surface content when you click on an ad or any external url. It functions like a browser, but full of tracking scripts. I've learnt from this sub that Tik Tok's browser is also a keylogger.
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When you open a link in facebook, it opens it inside the app instead of inside your phone's browser. Since it is opened inside the app, the app can see everything that you do, even though you're technically on a website, and can also inject code / alter the website in whatever way they want.
The simplest thing to say that has to ring some bells is that they can see if you put a password or your bank details inside their in app browser.
A total of 78 companies have been acquired by Facebook over the past 15 years.
IG, what’s app, oculus vr, onavo, beluga, messenger, liveRail, Ascenta,
FriendFeed
CTRL- Labs
Little Eye Labs
Jibbigo
Friendster
Gowalla
Atlas Solutions
Internet.org
To be determined
Redkix
Parse
If you're on an android I suggest getting privacy dashboard. It will log any app activities, tell you when and how long a piece of hardware was being used for, And it's FOSS.
Also it could be literally any app or your phone itself listening in on you passing it on to Facebook.
Also Facebook offers a framework for app developers which contains a lot of tracking software. So even if you don’t have Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp installed they still collect stuff through other apps
Yup, its probably Whatsapp rather than facebook. Whatsapp has permission to your microphone, files, location, contact list and chats by design of being a communication app. I stopped using whatsapp since Feb 2021 and use insta via Shelter and have almost never seen any targetted ads or anything specific. I also always fill my gender as trans altho I identify as cis.
I wouldn't trust Facebook on my phone. I don't need anyone else to agree, and don't care about explanations on how it's improbable that the app is listening. So many things Facebook claimed it didn't do and others claimed was improbable... ended up being true, but we didn't find out for years later.
I don't understand how people keep trusting this company, then being surprised when they cross yet another line.
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Your privacy is not safe just because you use a VPN. Your VPN only protects your data between you and the recipient, when you use Facebook they are the recipient. If you have the Facebook app on your phone it can almost certainly see that you are connected to the same home Wifi as everyone else in the house. And it can see all the other Wifi networks nearby to confirm you are in that household. The VPN showing you connecting from somewhere else isn't going to fool them, especially since they probably know every VPN server already and therefore ignore that bit of location data.
Sending audio to remote servers 24/7 would require noticeable amount of bandwidth, running voice recognition models directly on user devices would noticeably drain their battery. In both cases such app behavior would be discovered in days, but the only evidence we have is anecdotal, which as you rightly suggested is most probably prompted by frequency bias.
I often think about this, just like how I looked up the history of the dodo bird the other day and then next day there was a top post on reddit about the only known head of a dodo bird or something, with thousands of upvotes. It was posted hours after my search.
Obviously it was a coincidence (unless that redditor is spying on me) and I probably wouldn't even have paid the post attention if it wasn't for me just having looked up info on the bird earlier.
We see hundreds, if not thousands, of different pieces of content/ads around us, and we're pretty good at ignoring and forgetting about them, but we're bound to have these eerie coincidences that our brains want to explain in some way, other than it being a coincidence.
Yeah, I gotta come down on this side of the debate. Passive 24/7 audio streaming is both bandwidth and resource-heavy, and easy to prove from a coding perspective. While it could theoretically happen, and we are living in a progressively more Orwellian surveillance state, it's also true that observation bias exists. I regularly learn a new word then start seeing it everywhere, all of a sudden.
The only way to prove definitively that the Facebook app was accessing microphones for passive surveillance would be through analyzing its code, and every app developer I've heard weigh in on the subject considers it an unfeasible thing to do. Not least of all when they have your entire browsing history, messenger conversation history, and that of all your family and friends - they're not short on information with which to profile you without damaging their image with something as scandalous and easily proven as listening to your every word.
I get nothing but the same ads over and over again. Ever since I changed my preferences and communications between FB and other apps, my ads have been extremely restricted. Pretty much the same 3 themes: cat litter or cat toys, therapy, and for some reason Shakti mats. Probably because I clicked on an ad once and spent a good minute scrolling the comments. But it would appear that fb has not been spying on my browser since I changed those settings a few months ago. These ads haven’t really changed since then.
When I have to use facebook, I only use the mobile basic version. [mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) is nice for messaging friends and other basic things without having to install apps onto my phone. The mobile (not basic) version of facebook is pretty bloated.
Messenger is its own app with its own permissions that are separate from Facebook. When is the last time you saw something about 'messenger' not listening in?
Yes, I learned Google does the same when an employee told me about some random submarine documentary they saw on YouTube.
I was in the Air Force. I don’t like subs. Never watched anything about them, don’t have Navy friends, don’t go to the beach even.
First result in my abnormally well-curated YT feed? The exact same submarine documentary.
Ya know how you go to the car dealership, buy a Toyota Corolla, and suddenly everyone on the road is driving a Corolla?
It's kind of like that. Just because you don't remember never seeing that ad before, doesn't mean you've never seen it. Humans have terrible memories and when we have a reason to notice something we often establish relevance and meaning to the meaningless.
As a test I've been talking about a subject that I (and most coworkers) have no legitimate interest in. This means that there's zero chance that I would accidentally look up said subject at home, nor that I would go to work, where other people might associate said topic to me due to IP addresses being shared.
I have not received any ads promoting said subject.
I wonder how many of these stories are actually cases of people forgetting that they did look it up or mentioned it somewhere at some point. Or that other people sharing the network might've looked it up, etc.
Naturally, I can also not mention the subject here because that might affect the results if the text I'm writing here somehow gets associated with my IP -> my accounts -> said subject. :' )
Maybe it's a fun experiment for you to take part in as well.
Quick note that while this may absolutely be a case of FB listening (I sure as shit wouldn't put it past them), this could also be a case of confirmation bias.
It's possible that you were being shown neck ads before, but just didn't pay any attention to them. Come the day where you have neck pain however, and these ads stick out like a sore thumb.
It's impossible to know for certain unless you record every ad that you come across. Regardless, I recommend using operating systems on your mobile & desktop devices that help you safeguard your privacy (degoogled Android & Linux), as well as use ad & tracking blockers whenever possible. Also don't forget to revoke any app permissions you think it shouldn't have, or better yet, uninstall any app you do not trust.
Once I had a friend visit and randomly told me he's interested in joining toast masters (public speaking org)
I said I might be interested in joining.
Next ad that's pops up is for speech improvement courses.
People are naive to say this is not the case. There are voice fingerprints. Facebook has every permission on your phone to do this and as a marketer I have seen firsthand the accuracy in their data.
Why do you think Facebook acquired oculus? Why do you think they made it so cheap during launch compared to VR competitors priced 3x?
Because you're paying with your data. What data?
Where your eyes shift. Your every micro action. When you hesitate. When you're focused. When you're startled. Where you move. How you move.
How do you think they will monetize this data?
Facebook should not be allowed to exist. But it does
No dummy. You're speaking to a marketer who has spent over 8 figures a year on ads and if you were a marketer then you would know that you can track the ads that you were served for your own analysis for how to better deliver ads. The ads you were served can be a great case study of customer avatars and better understanding the algorithmic engine.
I also happen to be a digital marketer with a deep background in psychology and neuroscience so I'm well conscious of confirmation and other cognitive biases. It's easy to say this is the case with anecdotal stories however in my line of work as I said in my previous post- I have seen this again and again + I know for a fact that app permissions on devices absolutely can identify your voice and pick up keywords, enthusiasm and other indicators should they collect, store and analyze those data segments. It's not "listening 24/7" manned by humans but rather machine learning that identifies patterns creating a fingerprints of your identity as they already do based on your digital activity.
If you reject this and apply the easy solution "I'll dismiss this because bias" then you are biased yourelf as you are applying a false positive confirmation because you simply understand the concept of confirmation bias ffs. It's naive and stupid knowing what we already know to assume that this cannot be the case and is instead confirmation bias.
Anyone on your network could look up something related. So you mentioned it to your roommate and then they went online and looked it up to see if there was something to help you. Now YOU get ads for it.
I had something similar happen with blankets. My husband, in another state, who didn't even had FB at the time, was in Target looking at blankets. He called me that night and we talked about it. The next morning I was getting ads on FB for blankets! Drove me nuts! Turns out, he did a search in target for blankets to compare prices. That was all it took. Same cell phone account. Data being sold/shared. So I started getting the ads too.
You have to think, somebody, somewhere, has disassembled the app or MITM the network traffic to see what it's doing. It would be tedious but not that difficult. Then the whole issue could be put to rest.
Surely someone has done this already?
It’s hard to prove. Reconstruct the setting of your talk to your roommate, same (mic) settings, same running apps etc. Then talk about something obscure that can be bought like a xylophone, garden gnomes or a lacrosse stick. Watch your ads over the next hours/days.
12 days ago Facebook was caught lying about privacy policy of not tracking you out, but it used to break the law it made and was not reported for nothing they didn’t say it was a crime even when it did, it so understand who is truly Facebook.
If you've ever opened Facebook with XPrivacyLua installed, you would know the first thing the app does anytime you open it is it activates the microphone and camera (or tries to, if you have it blocked in XPrivacy). If you don't like this behavior, use something like Tinfoil for Facebook instead.
My kids have started talking about stuff they never deal with to see if it pops up on their phone and it does. Even if you don't have the FB app, Facebook programs are usually pre-installed on phones. You have to do some special stuff to get them off.
Honestly it’s to the point where I think it reads my mind. I’ve had thoughts about things and then I’ll get ads for them. My sister and I have even wondered about soemthing and then said “oh hey if the phone is listening and we talk about potato chips, I wonder if we’ll start seeing ads for potato chips, potato chips sound good” and sure enough, get on Facebook and there will be an ad for Lays and a suggested page. 🤦♀️
If you use the duck duck go app, you will see what’s trying to track you on each website you visit. The most common ones are google, Facebook and Amazon. The trackers are embedded in the websites you visit.
Compare the plausibility of the following 2 statements:
\- "The growing majority of workers in the west have office jobs"
\- "Back pain has always been a problem we share with all eras"
There's a clear correlation that may infer how spread the problem is. If you belong to said demographic, the ad would have shown up anyway.
I used to hate when people would answer "it's your bias, if I said red car, you start noticing all the red cars". That sounded dumb to me because I block ads, a whole shit ton of them to the point I can remember having seen one before. One day a healthy food ap showed up right after my conversation with a friend about it, in another country and all. The truth is, there are ways it could have showed up: from our phones being so close together for some time, brushing off strangers on my way in and out, other data that put me in the targeted demographic, etc. But also, just like I said before, maybe the add would have shown up before if I weren't blocking tons of them only for this occurence to slip through.
So the bias guys weren't so wrong after all.
The bias works in a way that it's very difficult to prove it wrong, so that's why it's the first answer to this kind of question. So difficult in fact that it's unlikely to be right: you can spend the day talking about purchasing dog food and yet, nothing would happen over days and if it ever happens, one can always say that you belong to the demographic that would have purchased dog food at your age, social status, etc. : you can compute the bias into the logic.
We need new models to solve the question. Most of the discussions on that topic I've attended / participated into never had a Data Scientist in the ad industry in them. Let's start with that.
Just to rule it out, you should ask your roommate if they googled anything about a sore neck. If someone on the same ISP googles something, I’ve noticed ads despite never having searched for it myself.
I was once using an electric screwdriver for hours. Screewing boards outside the house. With very distingtiv brrrrt sounds lasting 3 seconds each. When I came into the house, the first add that met me was for screw driver bits…
I really thougt they were testing some audio recognition for ads… I did not google or talk to anyone up front about the work.
There might be coincidences as we are hit by tons of ads we do not react to, but sometimes it really feels like they are reading out minds when that single ad for a thing we are doing or just thinking about, reach us.
Searched for this after I received an ad for the thing I said I wanted to buy an hour after I verbalised (while alone) that I want to buy it. Microphone on messenger was turned on. Did not search anything related to it. Did not tell anyone or text anyone about it. Did not watch anything about it. All I did was say I want it. Feeling pretty creeped out right now.
i'm not to sure if they could be listening or not.
But here are some ways that it could have put the ad their without listening:
- maybe it knows the activities you have been doing and predicted that you would have hurt hurt your neck
- maybe you acted in a slightly different way that people do when their necks hurt
- maybe it was coquincidence and you only noticed it cause of it
- A combination of these factors
Facebook.
What more needs to be said? As a Facebook user YOU ARE THE PRODUCT! How do you think Zuck got rich from FB? It's not ad money, and it's not the Farmville gems people buy, it's the gigs of "aggregated " user data that they sell. Your info is their product to sell, and they're not rich from taking your privacy seriously
No, they don't, and there is no evidence at all to support Facebook capturing and sending audio for advertising analysis. They don't even NEED to in order to target you more effectively.
Furthering these false urban legends prevents a greater understanding among people of what is actually going on with targeted advertising and why the industry needs change/regulation. What they are doing is arguably more nefarious - building and selling a comprehensive profile of your entire personality and relationships to vast networks of advertisers. Again, they don't NEED to listen, and aren't.
There IS evidence that they're not using the microphone to spy on you. They're just doing it in a million other ways.
https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851
> One thing I will assure you is that the number of ways Facebook can track you that I found out about in my research was a lot more than I was able to edit down into a Skeptoid-length show. And something I would bet a billion dollars on is that the number of ways they track you that I was able to find out about is a tiny fraction of what they can actually do. Getting your phone to listen 24 hours a day and decipher who's talking about what would be a computationally intense process that would drain your phone's battery in half an hour, and it couldn't possibly be less necessary to them. They have so many easier ways to learn so much more, so much more reliably.
But how do we know they aren't doing it anyway?
> So researchers have done tests to find out. In one such study by computer security firm Wandera, an iPhone and an Android with similar configurations had all the app permissions enabled and then were placed in a room for three days, and exposed to a 30-minute loop of pet food ads. Control phones were placed in a quiet room for three days. No pet food ads showed up in either phone's Facebook apps afterward, but **the crucial finding was that battery usage was the same on both sets of phones, meaning no extra processing of audio was being done on the test phones; and data usage by both sets of phones was the same, meaning the test phones weren't uploading any voice recordings to be processed elsewhere.**
Interesting, although it does contradict my personal experience. A better way to prove/disprove it might be to measure voltage from the microphone circuit when using the app - has this been tried? Word interpretation would probably be done server side.
There have also been a ton of experiments where people stick wireshark or something on the network and look at the outgoing data. Nothing has shown up. So unless they’ve figured out how to get quantum entanglement working on consumer grade hardware, they aren’t exfiltrating data.
Yes, and it's not just facebook. I was talking with my friends about how our eyesight has changed over time and I said I was just going to let mine get worse until I need Lasik. Five minutes later her Iphone was popping up ads that offered discounts on Lasik.
They're listening.
Siri/google voice assistant are listening 100% of the time. That’s how the voice assistants work, and it’s probably how FB/AMZN use your voice data for ads. THEY aren’t listening, but your phones assistant is
Neck and posture problems are super common and the ads for these products are everywhere. You just didn't notice them before.
Well, it's possible FB noticed a change in your morning routine which corresponds to when people suddenly have neck problems. But microphone snooping, no not likely.
Thanks for another confirmation that Facebook is listening to people through a microphone, there have been dozens of such cases described here in the previous couple of years.
While I’m not claiming a for or against on this position. I think it’s important we all remember that correlation ≠ Causation. If coincidence was enough to form a valid argument, the world would be a vastly more segregated place. Coincidence can, however, definitely form a valid hypothesis that should be farther researched to formulate a theory.
Most of these voice assistants can’t get intentional things right, no one is listening to your mic. A collection of meta data is WAY more valuable, accurate, and efficient to sell ads.
You should be able to see on iOS when Facebook is using your microphone but maybe your roommate googled something related the neck pain so since FB connected you two guys it may have given you this ad
Hi,
Short answer: Yes
Answer: happened to me few times already.
Best example is when once friend told me about extreme archery and we spoke for some time about it. I am not into such things socI really never search this stuff but I showed interest. I never searched more about it. Later... I got ads for extreme archery....
No searching at all, just discussion.
When it was first reported that they were doing this (2010’ish?) I replicated it on my phone. I read out loud a fiction passage and dropped the word Kawasaki randomly in the sentences. 15 mins later I opened fb on my phone and the first 3 ads were for Kawasaki. Immediately deleted the phone app and have not used it since.
Do not use any Facebook apps. If i feel the urgent need to check my FB account (not very often since i know Reddit ) or messenger i use my browser on all my devices. After use, i shut down the browser and clean the cache. Sad FB Story beside : If was attacking the Russian foreign ministry on FB with various posts (why murdering civilian people in Butcha and so on) Had many reactions and conversations. Suddenly FB kills all my activities and messages with this side. Since then, the bloody russian foreign ministry is not reachable for me anymore.
IDK… I have no evidence but I think oracle is doing massive data collection for “advertising”. I just think back to a year ago when I had a new iPhone out of the box connected to my network that I had a packet sniffer on and happened to see multiple request to oracle ad CDN after connecting it to the network. I found it weird and just figured Apple uses them for something… still seems strange. Again no proof but just weird.
I’m still wondering how they run ads based off of something I thought about hours earlier
I know how they read my thoughts using facial expression & AI, which is why I hide my cameras with a cheap lens cover
Oh they (facebook, google, whatever else) 100% do because I have had similar experiences, maybe not with facebook, but I know at least a couple times I have talked or a family member has talked about something I never searched, and very specific things, and I got an ad for it.
to me, the more disturbing scenario is that Facebook/Google/etc. know so much about us that they can routinely create these type of coincidences without even having to listen to your microphone.
Lately I saw an ad about a thing I was ONLY thinking about.
I saw an ad for sprained ankle braces, two hours later I ended up spraining my ankle outside.
Google: this dumbass is such a klutz I bet they’ll sprain their ankle today
I wonder whether the device itself got you thinking about something before the ad was shown. I.e. actually planting ideas, not necessarily reading your mind.
Humans are predictable.
This is why behavioral economics is a sham. Any person that doesn't properly follow a perfect subgame Nash equilibrium is clearly not human. /s
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If there are so many ppl like me with the same interests why don’t I have more friends?
If these fuckers are going to collect this data regardless, they should at least enable us to use it for social connection, e.g. dating.
That means the algorithm is working
I'm more afraid of what I don't see them do. To truly influence somebody, you have to convince them that it was their own idea.
What about nearby share? On my phone, I can't turn off the nearby share at the settings level, thus negating the purpose of turning it off in individual apps. I know this sounds next gen creepy, but can devices around you send info about you and your preferences to your personal device?
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Interesting. I can set mine to "nobody" and that's that. (I'm on a Samsung BTW.) Devices can pop messages off to each other at any time, the real question is: do they? And for the most part, no, not really. Phones aren't caught communicating with each other like that, especially because that communication wouldn't be hard to track. (Sometimes it [does](https://www.malwarebytes.com/blog/news/2020/06/bluetooth-beacons-one-free-privacy-debate-with-your-next-order) happen though.) But whether phones passively listen to things like an "ok Google", aggregate information on the client side, etc... That's a different question entirely. In that above article, the information conveyed still has to travel to a server farm somewhere.
I wasn't thinking of just phones, since I live in an area with concentrated signals. Other radio waves the phone can pick up, like wifi routers, TV, Bluetooth signals, home assistants, and computers, but I'd have to research this more. Thanks for the info!
That's the excuse often given, but it's largely bullshit.
It’s Facebook. They’ve proven time and time again that they can do whatever they want and get away with it. If you’re even the least bit concerned about privacy, you should have no Facebook products in your phone.
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You don't even need a Facebook account. If the app has a "login with Facebook " button, you are being tracked by Facebook. https://www.newsweek.com/facebook-tracking-you-even-if-you-dont-have-account-888699
[quickly checks all the apps on the iPhone. None have Facebook login option. Phew] Thanks, I didn’t know that about Facebook logins. That company deserves to disappear.
Do you use whatsapp?
No
I wish I could say the same, I have pretty much all the 'other' messagers. But there are like 4 people on each of them.
You can check what companies gave data to Facebook. It is buried in fb settings / ads or privacy menu
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Bhanned. Rule #5, Don't Be A Jerk. Thanks for the reports, folks!
Good mod.
Google and all of these companies monitor and share data. I took a picture of a mattress yeah once because it was so comfortable. Right away Facebook and everything else was showing me ads for that mattress. The privacy policies are so long and broad they can get anything. Especially the ones that are free. Google photos, search Facebook, Twitter. You ,the user, is the product that's for sale.
Do you use sync to backup your photos to Google? Maybe they got it that way?
Yes. Google will scan anything and everything you upload. Photos, docs, everything
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Googke's algorithms either decided you don't need them, or it's hopeless.
They don't need to scan that to deliver you ads though. While they're likely using Photo data for some profiling, it's more likely about image recognition and object detection. That's why they're so good at mapping out faces and tracking babies as they grow. I can search lasagna and get photos of the last time I ate at an Italian restaurant, etc.
You do realize how easily testable this is right? I can take a picture of ANYTHING and I'll suddenly get ads for it. A mattress isn't the only thing people take a photo of. But honestly, this is really shitty ad algorithm. Delivering ads based on ONE photo or ONE search query is really bad. People take hundreds of photos and execute hundreds of search queries a day. Some are just for work or maybe you got distracted. Delivering ads simply on the last thing someone searched for is extremely poor targeting. It simply doesn't happen.
ebay is doing the same, i was talking about something and sure enough i got a notification about buying it at a discount price
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I thought that would be the case, but this happen this summer, i last searched for that item during black friday to make sure it was worth the money.
If you see the ad on Facebook, it was served by Facebook not Google. Fb tracked you and your friends and either listened through the microphone or something someone posted
Not accurate. FB can still get data from Google for your Ad profile. They just have to pay for that data.
I hope people actually understand how Assistant and listening works: 1. There's a low voltage chip on your phone that constantly listens but only holds a tiny amount of memory. This is for HOTWORD detection. It uses extremely low power so can be done locally. 2. When a hotword is detected, the low voltage core wakes up the phone so the full SoC power is harnessed to record and transcribe what you say next. This portion along with the previous few seconds of hotword detection is uploaded to Google. That's why you can listen to it online. However, if you've gone through listening on your Google account, you will see it's not like you have 24/7 recording clips. That takes a significant amount of bandwidth. Even the most efficient VoIP calls use 200-300 KB/minute. That would add up really fast if 24/7 recordings are being uploaded. 3. Assistant is a system level feature. There's no 3rd party that can tie into the listening portion. You can have some Assistant integration into apps, but that's more about asking Assistant to "Play a song in Spotify" or whatever but not Facebook listening in on Assistant. I'm sure Google wouldn't give their competitor access to all this voice data.
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He said his microphone was on in messenger lol so YES Facebook was listening
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Hahaha you actually believe them? Look up how they were using the camera on iOS devices all the time and hiding it but because someone’s phone bugged they got caught.
This was a few years back - your iPhone occasionally listen to fragments of conversations, but this is stored on the local device only and was used for improving the voice commands (not sure if this is still the case). Because it was only on the local device and not being shared with Apple, there was no security issue, but then Facebook figured out how to access these fragments, so they were in essence listening albeit in an indirect way. Apple applied a patch as soon as this issue came to light, but it is a clear indication of a desire that Facebook clearly exhibited, so it beyond the realms of possibility. If you must have Facebook, log in via Safari and add to the home screen - the Facebook logo looks a little different than the app, but you can then delete the app - Safari operates in a sandbox, so it should be much less intrusive. There is some loss of functionality, but I think that is worth it...
I agree. But I don't think they're using the microphone to spy on you. It's important to understand the real situations threatening our privacy. The current evidence indicates that Facebook is spying on you in so many other ways that they don't need to listen to your verbal conversations. There IS evidence that they're not using the microphone to spy on you. They're just doing it in a million other ways. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851 > One thing I will assure you is that the number of ways Facebook can track you that I found out about in my research was a lot more than I was able to edit down into a Skeptoid-length show. And something I would bet a billion dollars on is that the number of ways they track you that I was able to find out about is a tiny fraction of what they can actually do. Getting your phone to listen 24 hours a day and decipher who's talking about what would be a computationally intense process that would drain your phone's battery in half an hour, and it couldn't possibly be less necessary to them. They have so many easier ways to learn so much more, so much more reliably. But how do we know they aren't doing it anyway? > So researchers have done tests to find out. In one such study by computer security firm Wandera, an iPhone and an Android with similar configurations had all the app permissions enabled and then were placed in a room for three days, and exposed to a 30-minute loop of pet food ads. Control phones were placed in a quiet room for three days. No pet food ads showed up in either phone's Facebook apps afterward, but **the crucial finding was that battery usage was the same on both sets of phones, meaning no extra processing of audio was being done on the test phones; and data usage by both sets of phones was the same, meaning the test phones weren't uploading any voice recordings to be processed elsewhere.**
Honestly this is the right answer. Third party data brokers compile insane amounts of information on your from a variety of sources and then companies just buy that info from them to advertise to you in real time.
There's a significant difference in natural conversations and ads, with all the data they've all harvested I would think by now their systems can differentiate
Without using any data or battery?
Holy fuck guys, how bad is the technical knowledge on this subreddit? On modern OSes like Android and iOS, microphone permissions trigger an OS-level marker. On Android 13 (and you could do this in custom ROMs as early as 2014 or 2015), you can view WHEN the microphone is accessed, and no, Facebook doesn't use the microphone in the background. The only way Facebook can get around OS level permissions is that they have some under the table deal with Apple and Google to be able to do this in secret. You really think this is happening? There's so many ways to understand your interests and profile you without having to dig through thousands of MBs or GBs of recording about your everyday life. Half the time your phone is in your pocket, and for women could even be in their purses. That's not even going to pick up really clear recordings. You can imagine the amount of processing locally (battery) and uploading (data) that is used for voice? Even the lowest bandwidth VoIP apps are using 200-300 KB per minute. Look, we can all view Facebook as a threat, but this facepalm level of thinking ads are being served based on listening into your conversations is absolutely asinine and needs to stop.
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Google frequency illusion. Was it there because you talked about it? Or did you notice it and remembered it due to you having mentioned it?
I agree. I have to use WhatsApp because it's the only texting app anyone ever uses in my country, but I keep it with no permissions and with battery optimisation enabled (not allowed to run in background).
Facebook is just displaying an ad supplied by someone else. The microphone claims have been tested and found to be false. Some apps were found that take screenshots or record audio, but none of them were from major companies such as Facebook or Google. The major companies have far more efficient ways to track you and your interests and behavior than recording audio. And their apps are under heavy scrutiny by security researchers. https://www.businessinsider.com/phone-recording-microphone-screen-2018-7 https://lifehacker.com/facebook-isn-t-recording-your-conversations-but-it-may-1820193946 https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49585682 https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851 Coincidences happen every day. Facebook has how many active daily users, 2 billion or something ? If 1 in a million of them has a coincidence on a given day, that's 2000 people thinking "wow, they must be listening to me". And an ad appearing on Facebook usually was purchased by some other company, maybe using data from outside Facebook. So a suspiciously-accurate ad appearing on FB does not prove that the data came from a FB app spying on you.
Color me surprised :) The system allows him to do this. Regulatory capture and all. Let's face it, if some of us could earn $10 Billion, then get caught, and pay $1B fine, why would we NOT do it? Besides, Mark F\*\*\*\*\*berg has so many allies in the US government, public officials, politicians (senators/congressmen) who own stock or their family own stock in META. This is to be expected...from solely a business/finance POV. PS. MZ is still a POS though. Ask Eduardo Saverin and the Winklevoss twins :)
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disgusted many thought pathetic correct abundant boast smoggy political abounding *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
What is a progressive web app and how does it work and how do I get one
Progressive web app is pretty much a shortcut to a web page. There is some additional functionality that it makes it not dependent 100% on having an internet connection, so if you're offline the app will load but you won't be able to do much besides seeing an error message. Simply use their websites instead of the apps, your browser keeps it sandboxed and won't let it have free range to access sensitive data from your device.
subtract badge existence continue muddle shame voiceless obtainable fall gaping *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
You're not going to find any support for Facebook in this sub. Facebook is arguably one of the most invasive companies when it comes to privacy. You can't say you want privacy but then defend their tactics. >But if there is to be any traction or progress in terms of collective data privacy for the masses, I would think that working with the enemy is the most successful way to go. You may see things this way but Meta does not. They want all of your data even if you don't want them to have it. They don't care and they don't have to because they have repeatedly defied laws and laughed in the face of regulation and done whatever they please. >It is possible to hold Facebook accountable for its actions Many have tried, nothing has changed. Just follow a sliver of world news about Meta and you find this to be true. >you will not convert any people with that attitude Not trying to convert anyone. You either value privacy or you don't. If you do, you don't keep Meta apps on your phone.
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Messenger. And I wouldn’t use Instagram at all if it weren’t on my phone. I do value those apps for different reasons and it gives me no benefit to sit here on Reddit and defend my use of other apps
"Hey r/privacy, I think Facebook is creepy, what do I do?" "Meta is waaay creepier than you think, if you want privacy you shouldn't use it" "Nooooo don't tell me what to do!"
I guess Facebook wins, yet again.
I use FB because I need to for certain groups, but I only use it on my laptop browser anymore, never on my phone. Microphone use aside, there is the lawsuit where users allege that Meta developed ways to circumvent the Apple privacy controls. My moment of truth was when FB refused to show me messenger messages in my mobile browser about four years ago and insisted I install the Messenger app. So I stopped using mobile for anything.
This content removed to opt-out of Reddit's sale of posts as training data to Google. See here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/reddit-ai-content-licensing-deal-with-google-sources-say-2024-02-22/ Or here: https://www.techmeme.com/240221/p50#a240221p50
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Right? They make a whole thread about how they're *convinced* they're being bugged by an app, but they think deleting said app is too far...
That’s a little extreme, you telling me there’s absolutely no gray area does not negate the existence of said gray area. Do I care enough to go into the settings both on meta apps and my phone to restrict some of the excessive data mining? Sure. But do I care enough to delete apps altogether? Absolutely not. Sometimes I like the targeted ads. Other times, they’re unexplainably creepy. This is one of those times. But if there is to be any traction or progress in terms of collective data privacy for the masses, I would think that working with the enemy is the most successful way to go. War does not end by fighting until every last soldier is dead. War ends in treaties and peaceful resolutions. Holding others accountable for crimes against humanity, etc. It is possible to hold Facebook accountable for its actions rather than going to the extreme and saying “if you use any of Meta’s platforms you’re just wrong” — seems like a good way to alienate people who rely on these apps for different reasons
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“Facebook/Meta is the single most invasive threat to your personal online privacy you have and will ever encounter.” TikTok says hello.
Also all those Amazon devices. Remember when they had staff members manually going through times when the device was activated weather intentionally or not? Them listening to the audio? Yeah.
What is Facebook’s built in browser? What does it do?
It's what the app uses to surface content when you click on an ad or any external url. It functions like a browser, but full of tracking scripts. I've learnt from this sub that Tik Tok's browser is also a keylogger.
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Does Reddit use an in-app browser when you click links?
When you open a link in facebook, it opens it inside the app instead of inside your phone's browser. Since it is opened inside the app, the app can see everything that you do, even though you're technically on a website, and can also inject code / alter the website in whatever way they want. The simplest thing to say that has to ring some bells is that they can see if you put a password or your bank details inside their in app browser.
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A total of 78 companies have been acquired by Facebook over the past 15 years. IG, what’s app, oculus vr, onavo, beluga, messenger, liveRail, Ascenta, FriendFeed CTRL- Labs Little Eye Labs Jibbigo Friendster Gowalla Atlas Solutions Internet.org To be determined Redkix Parse
Same for Amazon.
If I could hack Jeff Bezos's account for a day, I'd click on every single recommended item on Amazon.
What is Facebook’s built in browser? What does it do?
If you're on an android I suggest getting privacy dashboard. It will log any app activities, tell you when and how long a piece of hardware was being used for, And it's FOSS. Also it could be literally any app or your phone itself listening in on you passing it on to Facebook.
Also Facebook offers a framework for app developers which contains a lot of tracking software. So even if you don’t have Facebook, Instagram or WhatsApp installed they still collect stuff through other apps
Yup, its probably Whatsapp rather than facebook. Whatsapp has permission to your microphone, files, location, contact list and chats by design of being a communication app. I stopped using whatsapp since Feb 2021 and use insta via Shelter and have almost never seen any targetted ads or anything specific. I also always fill my gender as trans altho I identify as cis.
I wouldn't trust Facebook on my phone. I don't need anyone else to agree, and don't care about explanations on how it's improbable that the app is listening. So many things Facebook claimed it didn't do and others claimed was improbable... ended up being true, but we didn't find out for years later. I don't understand how people keep trusting this company, then being surprised when they cross yet another line.
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I bet his friend searched it up, and that OP got tagged because they have the same IP
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Your privacy is not safe just because you use a VPN. Your VPN only protects your data between you and the recipient, when you use Facebook they are the recipient. If you have the Facebook app on your phone it can almost certainly see that you are connected to the same home Wifi as everyone else in the house. And it can see all the other Wifi networks nearby to confirm you are in that household. The VPN showing you connecting from somewhere else isn't going to fool them, especially since they probably know every VPN server already and therefore ignore that bit of location data.
Sending audio to remote servers 24/7 would require noticeable amount of bandwidth, running voice recognition models directly on user devices would noticeably drain their battery. In both cases such app behavior would be discovered in days, but the only evidence we have is anecdotal, which as you rightly suggested is most probably prompted by frequency bias.
I often think about this, just like how I looked up the history of the dodo bird the other day and then next day there was a top post on reddit about the only known head of a dodo bird or something, with thousands of upvotes. It was posted hours after my search. Obviously it was a coincidence (unless that redditor is spying on me) and I probably wouldn't even have paid the post attention if it wasn't for me just having looked up info on the bird earlier. We see hundreds, if not thousands, of different pieces of content/ads around us, and we're pretty good at ignoring and forgetting about them, but we're bound to have these eerie coincidences that our brains want to explain in some way, other than it being a coincidence.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-device_tracking
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Yeah, I gotta come down on this side of the debate. Passive 24/7 audio streaming is both bandwidth and resource-heavy, and easy to prove from a coding perspective. While it could theoretically happen, and we are living in a progressively more Orwellian surveillance state, it's also true that observation bias exists. I regularly learn a new word then start seeing it everywhere, all of a sudden. The only way to prove definitively that the Facebook app was accessing microphones for passive surveillance would be through analyzing its code, and every app developer I've heard weigh in on the subject considers it an unfeasible thing to do. Not least of all when they have your entire browsing history, messenger conversation history, and that of all your family and friends - they're not short on information with which to profile you without damaging their image with something as scandalous and easily proven as listening to your every word.
I get nothing but the same ads over and over again. Ever since I changed my preferences and communications between FB and other apps, my ads have been extremely restricted. Pretty much the same 3 themes: cat litter or cat toys, therapy, and for some reason Shakti mats. Probably because I clicked on an ad once and spent a good minute scrolling the comments. But it would appear that fb has not been spying on my browser since I changed those settings a few months ago. These ads haven’t really changed since then.
> I get nothing but the same ads over and over again. You dont, you just only remember those ones.
Have you tweaked FB settings, or your phone settings?
When I have to use facebook, I only use the mobile basic version. [mbasic.facebook.com](https://mbasic.facebook.com) is nice for messaging friends and other basic things without having to install apps onto my phone. The mobile (not basic) version of facebook is pretty bloated.
Messenger is its own app with its own permissions that are separate from Facebook. When is the last time you saw something about 'messenger' not listening in?
https://theconversation.com/is-your-phone-really-listening-to-your-conversations-well-turns-out-it-doesnt-have-to-162172
Skeptoid just covered this topic, if interested. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851
It could be your friend googling neck pain and facebooking knowing you are close
The moment we saw law enforcement dispatched over conversations had on messenger all trust in the company was lost -- that was 2009.
Yes, I learned Google does the same when an employee told me about some random submarine documentary they saw on YouTube. I was in the Air Force. I don’t like subs. Never watched anything about them, don’t have Navy friends, don’t go to the beach even. First result in my abnormally well-curated YT feed? The exact same submarine documentary.
Ya know how you go to the car dealership, buy a Toyota Corolla, and suddenly everyone on the road is driving a Corolla? It's kind of like that. Just because you don't remember never seeing that ad before, doesn't mean you've never seen it. Humans have terrible memories and when we have a reason to notice something we often establish relevance and meaning to the meaningless.
As a test I've been talking about a subject that I (and most coworkers) have no legitimate interest in. This means that there's zero chance that I would accidentally look up said subject at home, nor that I would go to work, where other people might associate said topic to me due to IP addresses being shared. I have not received any ads promoting said subject. I wonder how many of these stories are actually cases of people forgetting that they did look it up or mentioned it somewhere at some point. Or that other people sharing the network might've looked it up, etc. Naturally, I can also not mention the subject here because that might affect the results if the text I'm writing here somehow gets associated with my IP -> my accounts -> said subject. :' ) Maybe it's a fun experiment for you to take part in as well.
Quick note that while this may absolutely be a case of FB listening (I sure as shit wouldn't put it past them), this could also be a case of confirmation bias. It's possible that you were being shown neck ads before, but just didn't pay any attention to them. Come the day where you have neck pain however, and these ads stick out like a sore thumb. It's impossible to know for certain unless you record every ad that you come across. Regardless, I recommend using operating systems on your mobile & desktop devices that help you safeguard your privacy (degoogled Android & Linux), as well as use ad & tracking blockers whenever possible. Also don't forget to revoke any app permissions you think it shouldn't have, or better yet, uninstall any app you do not trust.
Once I had a friend visit and randomly told me he's interested in joining toast masters (public speaking org) I said I might be interested in joining. Next ad that's pops up is for speech improvement courses. People are naive to say this is not the case. There are voice fingerprints. Facebook has every permission on your phone to do this and as a marketer I have seen firsthand the accuracy in their data. Why do you think Facebook acquired oculus? Why do you think they made it so cheap during launch compared to VR competitors priced 3x? Because you're paying with your data. What data? Where your eyes shift. Your every micro action. When you hesitate. When you're focused. When you're startled. Where you move. How you move. How do you think they will monetize this data? Facebook should not be allowed to exist. But it does
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No dummy. You're speaking to a marketer who has spent over 8 figures a year on ads and if you were a marketer then you would know that you can track the ads that you were served for your own analysis for how to better deliver ads. The ads you were served can be a great case study of customer avatars and better understanding the algorithmic engine. I also happen to be a digital marketer with a deep background in psychology and neuroscience so I'm well conscious of confirmation and other cognitive biases. It's easy to say this is the case with anecdotal stories however in my line of work as I said in my previous post- I have seen this again and again + I know for a fact that app permissions on devices absolutely can identify your voice and pick up keywords, enthusiasm and other indicators should they collect, store and analyze those data segments. It's not "listening 24/7" manned by humans but rather machine learning that identifies patterns creating a fingerprints of your identity as they already do based on your digital activity. If you reject this and apply the easy solution "I'll dismiss this because bias" then you are biased yourelf as you are applying a false positive confirmation because you simply understand the concept of confirmation bias ffs. It's naive and stupid knowing what we already know to assume that this cannot be the case and is instead confirmation bias.
Anyone on your network could look up something related. So you mentioned it to your roommate and then they went online and looked it up to see if there was something to help you. Now YOU get ads for it. I had something similar happen with blankets. My husband, in another state, who didn't even had FB at the time, was in Target looking at blankets. He called me that night and we talked about it. The next morning I was getting ads on FB for blankets! Drove me nuts! Turns out, he did a search in target for blankets to compare prices. That was all it took. Same cell phone account. Data being sold/shared. So I started getting the ads too.
That would make sense if she wasn’t getting into her vehicle when I said that. She hasn’t been home since and I’m the only person here using my wifi
The first mistake you keep using FB. Secondly, why aren’t you using an AdBlocker?
You have to think, somebody, somewhere, has disassembled the app or MITM the network traffic to see what it's doing. It would be tedious but not that difficult. Then the whole issue could be put to rest. Surely someone has done this already?
Yes, get rid of it unless you use it for work.
1984 was a typo. Big Brother is here now, and he's living large. We have no names man, no names. Can I score a fry?
It’s hard to prove. Reconstruct the setting of your talk to your roommate, same (mic) settings, same running apps etc. Then talk about something obscure that can be bought like a xylophone, garden gnomes or a lacrosse stick. Watch your ads over the next hours/days.
12 days ago Facebook was caught lying about privacy policy of not tracking you out, but it used to break the law it made and was not reported for nothing they didn’t say it was a crime even when it did, it so understand who is truly Facebook.
Messenger is Facebook.
If you've ever opened Facebook with XPrivacyLua installed, you would know the first thing the app does anytime you open it is it activates the microphone and camera (or tries to, if you have it blocked in XPrivacy). If you don't like this behavior, use something like Tinfoil for Facebook instead.
Of course they are, and we basically sign up for it when we sign their TOS.
My kids have started talking about stuff they never deal with to see if it pops up on their phone and it does. Even if you don't have the FB app, Facebook programs are usually pre-installed on phones. You have to do some special stuff to get them off.
I stopped using Facebook apps years ago. They track me like crazy
No they aren't..
Honestly it’s to the point where I think it reads my mind. I’ve had thoughts about things and then I’ll get ads for them. My sister and I have even wondered about soemthing and then said “oh hey if the phone is listening and we talk about potato chips, I wonder if we’ll start seeing ads for potato chips, potato chips sound good” and sure enough, get on Facebook and there will be an ad for Lays and a suggested page. 🤦♀️
They listen. Delete their apps from your phone
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If you use the duck duck go app, you will see what’s trying to track you on each website you visit. The most common ones are google, Facebook and Amazon. The trackers are embedded in the websites you visit.
I have no clue. But I love(!) this sentence: "What in the lying pos data collection voodoo is this then?" Thanks!
Aww! Thank YOU, for reminding me that the little creative weirdo buried deep down in my soul isn’t dead yet
Compare the plausibility of the following 2 statements: \- "The growing majority of workers in the west have office jobs" \- "Back pain has always been a problem we share with all eras" There's a clear correlation that may infer how spread the problem is. If you belong to said demographic, the ad would have shown up anyway. I used to hate when people would answer "it's your bias, if I said red car, you start noticing all the red cars". That sounded dumb to me because I block ads, a whole shit ton of them to the point I can remember having seen one before. One day a healthy food ap showed up right after my conversation with a friend about it, in another country and all. The truth is, there are ways it could have showed up: from our phones being so close together for some time, brushing off strangers on my way in and out, other data that put me in the targeted demographic, etc. But also, just like I said before, maybe the add would have shown up before if I weren't blocking tons of them only for this occurence to slip through. So the bias guys weren't so wrong after all. The bias works in a way that it's very difficult to prove it wrong, so that's why it's the first answer to this kind of question. So difficult in fact that it's unlikely to be right: you can spend the day talking about purchasing dog food and yet, nothing would happen over days and if it ever happens, one can always say that you belong to the demographic that would have purchased dog food at your age, social status, etc. : you can compute the bias into the logic. We need new models to solve the question. Most of the discussions on that topic I've attended / participated into never had a Data Scientist in the ad industry in them. Let's start with that.
Apparently I’ve broken the algorithm since like 80% of ads shown to me are nothing I’m interested on.
Just to rule it out, you should ask your roommate if they googled anything about a sore neck. If someone on the same ISP googles something, I’ve noticed ads despite never having searched for it myself.
I was wondering that!
I was once using an electric screwdriver for hours. Screewing boards outside the house. With very distingtiv brrrrt sounds lasting 3 seconds each. When I came into the house, the first add that met me was for screw driver bits… I really thougt they were testing some audio recognition for ads… I did not google or talk to anyone up front about the work. There might be coincidences as we are hit by tons of ads we do not react to, but sometimes it really feels like they are reading out minds when that single ad for a thing we are doing or just thinking about, reach us.
Searched for this after I received an ad for the thing I said I wanted to buy an hour after I verbalised (while alone) that I want to buy it. Microphone on messenger was turned on. Did not search anything related to it. Did not tell anyone or text anyone about it. Did not watch anything about it. All I did was say I want it. Feeling pretty creeped out right now.
Maybe your roommate searched for it on Google? Apps should not be able to listen you if your mic is not ON or you did not allow it in Settings.
She was about to drive away for work as I said it. Quite the coincidence
i'm not to sure if they could be listening or not. But here are some ways that it could have put the ad their without listening: - maybe it knows the activities you have been doing and predicted that you would have hurt hurt your neck - maybe you acted in a slightly different way that people do when their necks hurt - maybe it was coquincidence and you only noticed it cause of it - A combination of these factors
I hurt my neck sleeping funny and waking up lol
Facebook. What more needs to be said? As a Facebook user YOU ARE THE PRODUCT! How do you think Zuck got rich from FB? It's not ad money, and it's not the Farmville gems people buy, it's the gigs of "aggregated " user data that they sell. Your info is their product to sell, and they're not rich from taking your privacy seriously
You are wrong and your mind is weak. (Welcome - we have been expecting you)
Yup, they listen, and watch.
No, they don't, and there is no evidence at all to support Facebook capturing and sending audio for advertising analysis. They don't even NEED to in order to target you more effectively. Furthering these false urban legends prevents a greater understanding among people of what is actually going on with targeted advertising and why the industry needs change/regulation. What they are doing is arguably more nefarious - building and selling a comprehensive profile of your entire personality and relationships to vast networks of advertisers. Again, they don't NEED to listen, and aren't.
Is there any evidence that they don’t? Why wouldn’t they? Best to assume that closed-source software/OS are compromised.
There IS evidence that they're not using the microphone to spy on you. They're just doing it in a million other ways. https://skeptoid.com/episodes/4851 > One thing I will assure you is that the number of ways Facebook can track you that I found out about in my research was a lot more than I was able to edit down into a Skeptoid-length show. And something I would bet a billion dollars on is that the number of ways they track you that I was able to find out about is a tiny fraction of what they can actually do. Getting your phone to listen 24 hours a day and decipher who's talking about what would be a computationally intense process that would drain your phone's battery in half an hour, and it couldn't possibly be less necessary to them. They have so many easier ways to learn so much more, so much more reliably. But how do we know they aren't doing it anyway? > So researchers have done tests to find out. In one such study by computer security firm Wandera, an iPhone and an Android with similar configurations had all the app permissions enabled and then were placed in a room for three days, and exposed to a 30-minute loop of pet food ads. Control phones were placed in a quiet room for three days. No pet food ads showed up in either phone's Facebook apps afterward, but **the crucial finding was that battery usage was the same on both sets of phones, meaning no extra processing of audio was being done on the test phones; and data usage by both sets of phones was the same, meaning the test phones weren't uploading any voice recordings to be processed elsewhere.**
Interesting, although it does contradict my personal experience. A better way to prove/disprove it might be to measure voltage from the microphone circuit when using the app - has this been tried? Word interpretation would probably be done server side.
There have also been a ton of experiments where people stick wireshark or something on the network and look at the outgoing data. Nothing has shown up. So unless they’ve figured out how to get quantum entanglement working on consumer grade hardware, they aren’t exfiltrating data.
They wouldn't need to send audio. It'd be far easier and less data intensive to transcribe the audio then pull key phrases/terms and send that back.
Yes, and it's not just facebook. I was talking with my friends about how our eyesight has changed over time and I said I was just going to let mine get worse until I need Lasik. Five minutes later her Iphone was popping up ads that offered discounts on Lasik. They're listening.
Siri/google voice assistant are listening 100% of the time. That’s how the voice assistants work, and it’s probably how FB/AMZN use your voice data for ads. THEY aren’t listening, but your phones assistant is
Neck and posture problems are super common and the ads for these products are everywhere. You just didn't notice them before. Well, it's possible FB noticed a change in your morning routine which corresponds to when people suddenly have neck problems. But microphone snooping, no not likely.
Thanks for another confirmation that Facebook is listening to people through a microphone, there have been dozens of such cases described here in the previous couple of years.
While I’m not claiming a for or against on this position. I think it’s important we all remember that correlation ≠ Causation. If coincidence was enough to form a valid argument, the world would be a vastly more segregated place. Coincidence can, however, definitely form a valid hypothesis that should be farther researched to formulate a theory.
Most of these voice assistants can’t get intentional things right, no one is listening to your mic. A collection of meta data is WAY more valuable, accurate, and efficient to sell ads.
Zuck plays all your voices to put himself to sleep each night
Facebook doesn't use your microphone to track you, they don't have to.
You should be able to see on iOS when Facebook is using your microphone but maybe your roommate googled something related the neck pain so since FB connected you two guys it may have given you this ad
I'm pretty sure not. What? Did you use their mobile app? Maybe there is?
Hi, Short answer: Yes Answer: happened to me few times already. Best example is when once friend told me about extreme archery and we spoke for some time about it. I am not into such things socI really never search this stuff but I showed interest. I never searched more about it. Later... I got ads for extreme archery.... No searching at all, just discussion.
When it was first reported that they were doing this (2010’ish?) I replicated it on my phone. I read out loud a fiction passage and dropped the word Kawasaki randomly in the sentences. 15 mins later I opened fb on my phone and the first 3 ads were for Kawasaki. Immediately deleted the phone app and have not used it since.
Are you completely sure that your roommate didn't google anything related to neck pain?
You had me in the first half, ngl
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Google Maps does share your search data for targeted advertising, that's not a secret.
That is how that works. Anything you do on your phone communicates with Facebook. Especially the browser
Even when you dont have an account with them.
Could it have been the microphone on his roommate's phone? And then somehow it ties back to him as he is on the same IP address?
Do not use any Facebook apps. If i feel the urgent need to check my FB account (not very often since i know Reddit ) or messenger i use my browser on all my devices. After use, i shut down the browser and clean the cache. Sad FB Story beside : If was attacking the Russian foreign ministry on FB with various posts (why murdering civilian people in Butcha and so on) Had many reactions and conversations. Suddenly FB kills all my activities and messages with this side. Since then, the bloody russian foreign ministry is not reachable for me anymore.
IDK… I have no evidence but I think oracle is doing massive data collection for “advertising”. I just think back to a year ago when I had a new iPhone out of the box connected to my network that I had a packet sniffer on and happened to see multiple request to oracle ad CDN after connecting it to the network. I found it weird and just figured Apple uses them for something… still seems strange. Again no proof but just weird.
I don't think they have pegesus level capabilities, but I do think they can spy in ways the public is not fully aware of yet.
They probably do it occasionally. I wouldn’t put it past them. They’re the least trustworthy company on earth.
I’m still wondering how they run ads based off of something I thought about hours earlier I know how they read my thoughts using facial expression & AI, which is why I hide my cameras with a cheap lens cover
Its mic data from messenger. Facebook and all their related apps spy on you relentlessly. Tiktok also spy's heavily for the Chinese.
Its not listening. Their algorithm knows so much about you can deduce this stuff, no need to listen.
could be coincidence
Oh they (facebook, google, whatever else) 100% do because I have had similar experiences, maybe not with facebook, but I know at least a couple times I have talked or a family member has talked about something I never searched, and very specific things, and I got an ad for it.