Discussion
Ugh.
Had an idle conversation with someone about pressure washers yesterday. Today, pressure washer ad in my inbox.
Let this iphone update to the new os last week and havent yet gone through all the privacy switches. Maybe i should just put it in a puddle instead.
@h2onolan See, this is why I am convinced there's some kind of listening function on apps. (I don't have that problem, typically, I won't load FB or Instagram or other social apps... )
@ai6yr @h2onolan I'm doubtful that there are phone apps surreptitiously using the mic when idle. Modern platforms (Apple and Android) make that fairly hard to do without detection, and no one to my knowledge has ever been caught trying (in a stock app).
HOWEVER the platform-based voice-based assistants (Siri, Google, Alexa, etc) DO listen all the time (which is how they detect the trigger words), so they certainly have the technical capability to listen for other keywords.
@ai6yr @h2onolan A related question is the legality. It's, well, complicated, at least under US law. See our eponymous paper on how complicated. https://jolt.law.harvard.edu/assets/articlePDFs/v30/30HarvJLTech1.pdf (Our focus here was on government interception, but similar laws apply against private wiretapping).
@mattblaze @h2onolan LOL this still does not explain why everyone's phones here started advertising hummus that one time... lol. Of course, this was 10+ years ago (when I deleted FB), could have been that one week and some sleazy FB app add-on. This was prior to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, mind you.
@mattblaze @ai6yr @h2onolan
Friends may wonder why all the antennas are sticking out of your backpack though.
https://www.thesignaljammer.com/products/handheld-extreme-21-5g/
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