19 ms·

Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations

302 points by Jerry2 9y ago

zwtaylor 9y ago
Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.
- misnome 9y ago
  Coincidence is a less sinister explanation. You never take note of the adverts if they weren’t immediately relevant.
  - Harimwakairi 9y ago
    But that's so much less entertaining to speculate about! Why should obvious truth get in the way of our fun?
  - api 9y ago
    This seems like something that could be settled via some kind of study, like playing audio to the phone and recording what ads get shown and doing it to a population of phones and social media accounts.
    - placeybordeaux 9y ago
      You can also monitor the network traffic, audio takes up a decent chunk of data. You can decompile the app and see what it does.
- Cacti 9y ago
  You can't imagine a less sinister explanation other than Facebook or some other entity is secretly recording your voice and the voices of millions of people, in violation of numerous state and federal laws, through their smartphone microphones, uploading it to their servers surreptitiously, performing voice analysis on it to determine who is speaking out of 350,000,000 possible cases (presumably they've already cataloged everyone in the country somehow?), and then use that to serve you more targeted advertising?! I mean, really?
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - smashingfiasco 9y ago
    I mean, they did break iOS platform rules and pulled some tricks to keep the app open in the background all of the time by sending an empty audio beffer to the phone for "playback." So yes, really.
  - zwtaylor 9y ago
    True, it seems far-fetched at first. We should keep in mind that a even few short years ago theorizing about the US Government operating a widespread domestic electronic surveillance dragnet was still the realm of delusional conspiracy theorists.
    - gaius 9y ago
      I remember the days when we thought archiving Usenet was technically impossible... Then DejaNews announced they'd been doing it for years already...
    - Cacti 9y ago
      I don't see how that matters. Besides, people have been discussing widespread, domestic electronic surveillance for decades far outside conspiracy fringes. The Clipper chip, as just one example, was a big deal at the time and received widespread, mainstream coverage.
  - fergie 9y ago
    Not sure if it is so far fetched to do some lightweight voice analysis (client side) and store significant terms in the same way that you would store search history.
- smashingfiasco 9y ago
  I can add to that anecdote... I was discussing which podcast app was best for Android with a friend, and in the presence of her Android phone. The next day, she started getting served ads for podcast apps all over the place. Keep in mind, this was someone who would have been completely new to podcasting and have never searched for podcasts or podcast apps before. Made both of us highly suspicious.
- 0x4f3759df 9y ago
  I was using google navigation and someone in the back asked "what do you mean one-size fits all"... then my phone which was only running navigator chimed in "one-size fits all means blah blah blah" was definitely creepy.
  - finnn 9y ago
    Google Maps navigation feature listens for verbal input (although it's supposed to be triggered by the wake word) to do things like add stops and such without touching it
- warrenmiller 9y ago
  Read up on the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
- objclxt 9y ago
  > It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena. You just forget all the other signal you've giving. Funnily enough, last week somebody was trying to convince me that Facebook was recording their every word. "I was telling a friend about a recent trip to Thailand", they said, "and I immediately saw an ad for Thai Tea". I asked if he'd used Facebook when he was in Thailand. He had. Which is more likely: Facebook is recording every conversation of every user on their app and mini them for ads or the advertiser in question just targeted people who had recently been to Thailand.
quickben 9y ago
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wakes-mobile-world-snapdragon-voice-activation https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wake... https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-sdk-device-speech-processing https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-s... "Industry wide adoption" 2013 The rest is PR.
- weaksauce 9y ago
  Has there been confirmation that a chip like that is inside any of these smartphones?
  - quickben 9y ago
    From the first link, they list Snapdragon 800 family. Early 2014, phones that used it were: http://www.freewaresquad.com/2014/02/18/phones-with-snapdragon-800-processor/ http://www.freewaresquad.com/2014/02/18/phones-with-snapdrag... Today that CPU series is everywhere.
    - weaksauce 9y ago
      interesting. thanks... I wonder if they have something like this for ios devices? seems like they have similar capabilities via the "hey siri" or whatever it is but I am curious if there is a hack to allow it to use that all the time from userland.
- halflings 9y ago
  IMHO this is irrelevant to what is being discussed here. > enables devices powered by Snapdragon 800 processors to be “woken up” by a custom voice command (beginning with a custom phrase set by the device OEM like “Hey Snapdragon”, for example) Because they are always on and have to use minimal power, these chips are used to recognise a very specific term (probably why these companies don't let you customise how you summon the assistant), and cannot do anything like voice transcription, network calls, ... (which would just kill your battery).
amiga-workbench 9y ago
Its proprietary software, I have no idea if its malware or not, so I stick to the mobile website and do not install their apps.
api 9y ago
Wouldn't it be possible to detect this? If this is happening then it must require some amount of CPU and memory use on the device, which even if hidden from the OS can be detected via power use and heat dissipation. It should be possible to indirectly measure a phone's CPU load (including any hidden processors) by filming it in the infrared and/or by attaching it to power and measuring the wattage consumed from the supply. If this is happening it must also require some network I/O. Something must be phoning home and reporting the data if the data is to be useful. Note that there is an intrinsic trade-off between the heat dissipation angle and the bandwidth angle. If the device is doing parsing, speech recognition, AI, etc. locally then it must be consuming more energy and dissipating more heat. If the device does these things remotely it must upload more data. Compressed audio is far more bandwidth intensive than digested meta-data. This seems like something security researchers can and should look into.
- smashingfiasco 9y ago
  Remember the time they kept the app open in the background on iOS devices by sending an empty audio buffer to the phone for playback? People started discovering that after iOS introduced the battery/power usage section in the Settings app.
- dlubarov 9y ago
  Wouldn't it be easier to reverse engineer their app? It seems easy enough, at least one the Android side. You could use something like baksmali to convert all the dex code to smali, then grep that for calls to AudioRecord/MediaRecorder and figure out what triggers that code. That's why I'm skeptical that Facebook would do this -- it seems like a terrible business decision given the high chance of getting caught, either by reverse engineering or a whistleblower.
sp527 9y ago
Once happened while remarking on the Fruit Loops shake at Burger King. Opened Facebook minutes later and got a Fruit Loops ad. I assure you I don’t message, post, or in any other way remotely suggest an affinity for Fruit Loops. Commenting on it at Burger King was the definition of a one-off incident. I guess another possible explanation is some very sophisticated combination of location tracking and Kellogg’s targeting people they know will be primed by that promotional item. And then of course it could always just be an amazing coincidence. All I know is I revoked microphone permission after that. EDIT: Something just occurred to me. Facebook doesn’t have to be the one using your microphone to target ads. The ad buyers just have to have a way to match your phone to your ID (which they can easily; there was a site posted here a while back that sells that) and then listen in through ANY one of the apps you have installed. If this were the scheme, Facebook could reasonably get away with saying “WE don’t use your microphone to target ads.”
- ChrisAntaki 9y ago
  Out of curiosity, why did you remark on the Fruit Loops shake? Could it be due to an ad campaign that started prior to your remark, and continues after it?
  - sp527 9y ago
    We were going through the drive-thru and saw a sign. It seemed so magnificently revolting, I wondered at the time if it was a red herring to drive word of mouth.
    - eclipxe 9y ago
      It’s a great shake btw. Tastes amazing. Seriously.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  I was once sitting at a bar having a beer, chatting with the bartender (one of my best friends) and the guy sitting next to me, whom I had never met before. I pulled out my phone to show my friend something that had been posted on Facebook and, while browsing Facebook right after that, the app showed the guy sitting right next to me as the first person under "People You May Know". I had not "checked in" or posted any updates while I was there, FWIW. It was at that point that I removed all permissions (i.e. location tracking) that I could from the Facebook app. More on-topic: I recall reading that the Facebook app would activate the microphone when one was posting a status update, apparently listening for things like a movie playing in the background and such. ETA: Related Snopes articles: https://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/facebooklisten.asp https://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/facebooklisten.asp https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/04/professor-claims-facebook-is-eavesdropping-on-their-users/ https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/04/professor-claims-facebook-...
billphipps 9y ago
the neo cons, they're onto us, man
thrill 9y ago
As long as it is possible (closed source software and hardware which is unaudited by trusted organizations), then it's going to continue to be assumed to be happening.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578016
nothis 9y ago
I used to dismiss these rumors as paranoia/conspiracy theories in a maybe naive application of Occam's razor. But concrete leaks and tech news of recent years made me a believer. I sure believe Facebook is capable of this, nowadays. The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. All I ever hear is anecdotes.
- f_allwein 9y ago
  > concrete leaks and tech news of recent years which ones do you mean?
- cvsh 9y ago
  >All I ever hear is anecdotes. The fact that there is no hard evidence makes me very skeptical. Every anecdote is explainable another way. Someone in the comments said they were having a conversation about storage units and saw an ad for storage units immediately after. Even if they had never searched for storage units -- and can we really be sure? That would be easy to forget -- Facebook might just have extrapolated they they would need a storage unit from related searches, like searching for a moving company. I would be willing to bet this type of algorithmic extrapolation explains every one of the microphone-ad-conspiracy stories.
- hobofan 9y ago
  > The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. I'll throw another layer on the conspiracy pile and say they deactivate that behavior for anyone they notice trying to prove it, similar to Uber's Greyball.
7373737373 9y ago
Like webcams, microphones should (and even be required to) have a status LED.
mingabunga 9y ago
I don't play golf or have any interest in it, but I was talking to my brother about him using golf carts on his farm as vehicles. I kept getting golf cart adverts in Facebook for the next month. Maybe it used location data to suggest we might be interested in the same thing, but it was a bit weird.
Feniks 9y ago
I know that smart TVs and the now defunct Kinect have the ability to monitor conversations. Hell I remember when I first used Soundhound! I was flabbergasted, what will they think of next. But I also know corporations are usually scrupulous about following laws so unless there is something in Facebook's ToS/EULA that mentions doing this I'm skeptical.
- QAPereo 9y ago
  Um... VW?
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  > so unless there is something in Facebook's ToS/EULA that mentions doing this I'm skeptical I don't see why the vague terms in their data policy [1] couldn't include audio (all-caps are my own emphases): > We collect information FROM or about the computers, PHONES, or other devices where you install or access our Services, depending on the permissions you’ve granted. [...] Here are some EXAMPLES of the information we collect: > - Device locations, including specific geographic locations, such as through GPS, Bluetooth, or WiFi signals. If device location is merely an example of information they gather from my phone then why couldn't audio just as easily be another example? [1] https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy
uptown 9y ago
One thing I've wondered was that Facebook began showing the recent photos you'd taken at the top of the app, and prompted you to share them. Are they sending every photo you take to their servers to feed it back to you at the top of your stream? I realize they could implement this feature by displaying local photos without sending them to their servers, but I've never seen confirmation that photos remain on your device only until you post. I uninstalled the app awhile back, so maybe they don't do this anymore, but anybody have any insights into how they handle your photos?
nilved 9y ago
There's an easy way to verify this: run tcpdump and record it happening. The fact that nobody has done this, instead only offering anecdotes, strongly suggests that these are coincidences or from other forms of targeting.
- throwaway613834 9y ago
  tcpdump? How do you record HTTPS connections (with pinned certificates, I might add) via tcpdump?
  - objclxt 9y ago
    Regardless, it’s easy enough to dump HTTPS traffic (pinned or otherwise) if you have root access to the client, which in the case of Android is not difficult to get.
    - throwaway613834 9y ago
      > Regardless, it’s easy enough to dump HTTPS traffic (pinned or otherwise) if you have root access to the client, which in the case of Android is not difficult to get. Hm, well okay, would you mind explaining the easy procedure that lets you capture Facebook traffic then? I have tried lots of different methods (Fiddler, Xposed modules, etc.) with root access and have failed. It's no problem in theory, but practice is another matter...
      - nilved 9y ago
        If you have root access to one end of encryption, you necessarily can inspect and save it. The way I would do this is by issuing a certificate for facebook.com that I mark as trusted on the device. This will let you do a man in the middle "attack." But you can probably do this directly on the device: just look for where the encryption is taking place, and intercept it.
        throwaway613834 9y ago
denzil_correa 9y ago
> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote. Personally, I am so used to corp speak and word play by major companies that it is difficult to take anything at face value. Therefore, I think the nature of the question asked to Facebook should be different. It should be on what they do rather do they do X. So, here's my question - "What does Facebook use data gathered from user microphones across any devices for?"
- glenstein 9y ago
  I was about to leave an extremely similar comment, but I was going to frame it in terms of the NSA "direct access" story. I got the impression from that story that immediate denials from tech companies, which seemed categorical, turned out to hinge on which magic words were used. In this case, when I read a sentence like "We don't use your microphone for ads" I end up doing that game where you re-read the sentence over and over and emphasize a different word each time, trying to guess which one is the magic word.
  - hexane360 9y ago
    "We don't use your microphone for ads, your phone uses its microphone for our ads" /s
  - trophycase 9y ago
    "We don't serve you advertisements through your microphone."
    - zionic 9y ago
      My favorite is "WE" don't, but our partners do.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
    We don't use your microphone for ads
  - zild3d 9y ago
huntermeyer 9y ago
Couple doesn't own cats. Talked about cat food to test if Facebook is listening. Started getting ads in FB for cat food: https://hooktube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://hooktube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
j_s 9y ago
Technicalities and choice of words are amazing ways to deny what isn't exactly happening here. For example, why use the word 'recording' when the problem is accessing the microphone at all... Facebook doesn't have to 'record' to stream the audio to their server for audio recognition without 'recording' anything. Of course all of this is just from the title of the article but the paranoid will pretty much always be able to find wiggle room.
firefoxd 9y ago
They do record your conversation [1] > Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fingerprint is sent to our servers to try and match it against our database of audio and TV fingerprints. By design, we do not store fingerprints from your device for any amount of time. And in any event, the fingerprints can’t be reversed into the original audio because they don’t contain enough information. And my previous comment :[2] > Notice how they say they do not store sound or recordings. But what if it is converted to text? Notice below they say that the fingerprint cannot be reversed into the original audio because it doesn't contain enough information. Text cannot be converted to the ORIGINAL audio but it can be converted to audio. This may be just me being paranoid, but I do know that legalese is designed exactly to say something without saying everything. [1] http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-share-and-discover-music-tv-and-movies/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-sh... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=foxfired https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=foxfired
- thisacctforreal 9y ago
  The length of the audio snippets they fingerprint is pertinent information. If it’s syllable- or word-length fingerprints it’s not much solace that they won’t be able to get the original audio.
habosa 9y ago
I just don't think anyone could record an analyze audio constantly without absolutely killing battery life. We're saved by the hardware.
rxever 9y ago
Once it happened to me that Facebook has shown me under "People You May Know" a person that was on the same WiFi as I was. We had zero mutual friends and no known connection prior.
- ikeboy 9y ago
  IP address is obviously sent to Facebook
- thsowers 9y ago
  Tagging users that have the same IP address seems to be a lot less sinister then what people are claiming
anotherelise 9y ago
https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
ceejayoz 9y ago
I'm inclined to dismiss it as confirmation bias, but I've had this experience personally - a conversation followed shortly by an extremely specific advertisement on FB shortly thereafter.
- tensor 9y ago
  I wonder how likely it is that this sort of thing happens without a mic being involved. Consider that Facebook already mines all sorts of Facebook data, as well as data from websites you visit. They much have a pretty good profile of people's interests. Given that, it's fairly probably that you will be shown ads about things that you are interested in, and it's fairly probably that you'll talk about these topics with friends. Given this and the number of people that use Facebook, it's probably not that unlikely that your experience happens simply by chance fairly frequently.
  - fiatjaf 9y ago
    The odds of something like that happening JUST AFTER you've spoken aloud about it should be small. Too small even for a dozen "random" events, even considering the number of Facebook users.
- teraflop 9y ago
  As suggested in the comments on Reddit, there's another possible explanation for this -- someone else in the conversation does a search based on what you were talking about, clicks on a result that sends tracking data to Facebook, and then the ads are retargeted to you based on a shared public IP address.
  - rickhanlonii 9y ago
    Could be shared IP or even just "target people located near people who are targets" since they have location data
  - ceejayoz 9y ago
    The last time I noticed this, it was a conversation between my wife and I, and I (we) poked around in her search history for that reason. Nothing that I could see, and it was within minutes of the conversation. All that said, I still lean towards confirmation bias.
5ilv3r 9y ago
They don't at all deny listening to conversations in this article. They only deny using that information for advertising. Now about the confirmation bias thing, it seems more likely to me that your credit card history or the store member card purchase history is being mined.
Overtonwindow 9y ago
I think the risk versus reward for Facebook and other companies is very high. All things being equal, I think it's more likely than not they will record things, will listen for words you say, and use that. The risk is enormous if it comes out with proof, but let's say they only listen a small percentage of the time, that kind of AI analysis is priceless.
- dhimes 9y ago
  There's no risk. If there was then there would be a statue of Edward Snowden on the National Mall. People are too stupid to care. Maybe I'm just having a bad day.
  - nihonde 9y ago
    No, you’re right. There is zero accountability for this kind of stuff. No US government agency or US-based business has ever suffered for it. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.
- cooper12 9y ago
  I doubt it will make a difference to most people. The staunch pro-privacy stance really only exists on tech-savvy forums like HN. Go on reddit sometimes and observe how people will say "so what if Google has all my info, it's useful and free". If Zuckerberg calling his users dumb fucks for trusting him didn't get them off the platform, a "small" privacy violation like this won't either.
  - dsharlet 9y ago
    This reddit post is the very top of /r/all right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user... And the general sentiment appears to be very far from what you claim. I think it's possible that this issue is going to come to a head this time around. I don't know what the outcome will be. Just saying it's confirmation bias (the likely real explanation?) may not be enough to satisfy people.
trophycase 9y ago
Of course they deny it. Even if they did there is absolutely no way they'd admit it. This article asserts nothing.
- cc81 9y ago
  On the other hand seeing as this must be done client side then someone should be able to do an investigation and see if Facebook sends voice data to their servers. And not to mention how many engineers that work on Facebook that could be whistle blowers.
0x0 9y ago
Couldn't somebody decompile the android or iOS app and try to find evidence for one way or the other?
- ehsankia 9y ago
  Or just have a proper methodology with many samples, control group, etc.
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    Everybody who has seen a Facebook ad not directly related to a previous conversation upvote this comment. For science.
  - Sargos 9y ago
    The kind of people who believe these conspiracy theories about Facebook are not the kind of people who believe in scientific methodology. Fuzzy bigfoot syndrome and all.
- bhouston 9y ago
  One can also instrument the app or Andriod to see when the microphone is accessed and if that data is sent them over the internet.
- corkraider 9y ago
  I'm sure many people have tried to do that and have found nothing. But having found nothing is not a definite proof of such a thing not existing so nobody published their results.
crooked-v 9y ago
No microphone access is needed for the spooky ultra-targeted advertising claims. You just have to keep in mind that Facebook is cross-referencing all your information with everyone physically near you (even people without Facebook accounts, as they can be extrapolated from their relatives and from photo geodata and tags), and cross-referencing all of those results with cookies from ads all over the web and with purchase history results from credit card companies and retailers.
ojosilva 9y ago
But has anyone scientifically validated any of these assumptions? It doesn't seem very hard. Speak, then visit pages with FB ads and take note. Seems like the internets has taken these serious accusations as some sort of corporate conspiracy but I haven't seen any independent, credible study of how Facebook's apps (confirmed) access to microphone are actually being translated into ads.
- bhouston 9y ago
  Can not one decompile the Facebook app, or just somehow instrument it to see when it accesses the microphone feed?
  - tedunangst 9y ago
    None of the people who think this is happening can.
  - StavrosK 9y ago
    Can one not do network traffic analysis to see what it sends? Would it be that hard?
- Spooky23 9y ago
  Put a few people with the Facebook app and messenger in the room and talk about gold coins.
feelin_googley 9y ago
It is interesting that they feel the need to officially deny it. The Twitter user co-hosts a podcast where users can call in to tell him whether they think Facebook is listening or not. One could argue, from a PR perspective, it does not matter whether Facebook is listening or not. First, some users do not trust them. Maybe Facebook is worried about those users telling other users. Second, some users believe it is technically feasible to listen. Finally, there is no legal/regulatory framework in the United States to effectively stop Facebook from listening[FN1], if they wanted to do so. They have clear business incentives to listen because the objective is to gather more personal data about users than their competitors. NB: Added "in the United States" for clarification. FN1. Incorrect? What are the theories of liability? What are the sources of law or regulation in the United States? Is injury required? What is the injury? How does one prove the injury?
- notimetorelax 9y ago
  Hm... what about the expectation of privacy? I’m guessing in some states and countries this is illegal.
- Spooky23 9y ago
  If they listen and record conversations that include conference calls, there’s a high probability that’s an issue.
imroot 9y ago
A few weeks ago, I went into a Lenscrafters because I needed some cleaning wipes for my glasses. I have Wifi, Bluetooth, and Location services disabled for Facebook. Someone messaged me on Facebook Messenger, I responded, put my phone back in my pocket, and finished the transaction, and then left Lenscrafters and walked down to the store that I was actually in the mall to see. Within the day, I started seeing contextual ads for eyeglasses in my facebook feed, along with ads in other apps for eyeglasses. I'm only suspecting that there's a service that does some flavor of ultrasonic beacon/listening technology, and facebook (along with DFP and the other large ad markets) are buying that service in troves.
- ec109685 9y ago
  Or like the article said, you just noticed the contextual eyeglass ads because you had just been to lens crafters and it seemed weird to you. Also, by contextual ads, do you mean the eye glass ads were related to context they were shown next to? The other explanation is Facebook has data sharing agreements with the payment instrument you used for the wipes.
  - imroot 9y ago
    I had been to Lenscrafters, but, there were no location services (no wifi, gps, or bluetooth) turned on...just my cell phone data. By contextual ads, I mean, "News stream ad/in game ad" -- basically, anything that had been targeted to be sent to my device. I believe I read something about Facebook using DataLogic info (which tries to tie payment instruments to advertising clients), but, apparently the music supplier for LensCrafters also has "Audio Beacon" technology for their clients to use (http://us.moodmedia.com/social-solutions/ http://us.moodmedia.com/social-solutions/), so, it could be one of the two.
    - ec109685 9y ago
      Rather than contextual, I think “native ad” is closer to what Facebook’s ads are versus Google’s old system that tried to match ads with the content they were shown next to.
- 9y ago
brad0 9y ago
> "At work, happened to me though earlier this year. Working as a barista, got a burn, talked to my partner in person about it, went to Target, bought the burn cream, and saw an ad on FB for the exact product I purchased. Never searched for product either," wrote Brigitte Bonasoro. Facebook has data sharing agreements with many, many companies. It's most likely that the cream was bought with a card then linked together with your facebook profile. It's not that hard, especially when you use the same email identifier for all those loyalty cards you have. EDIT A video that explains what Facebook does https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...
- aluhut 9y ago
  Not sure if this is better or worse.
  - notyourwork 9y ago
    Agreed and I am not sure the majority of population realize this or would be accepting of it.
  - madeofpalk 9y ago
    Well, I'm (marginally) more comfortable with a company like Facebook having this data compared to... Equifax
    - jacobush 9y ago
      Why? FB has agency to actually do something, probably horrible with it. Equifax would just get hacked.
      - aluhut 9y ago
        Don't forget the sell out when they finally jump the shark.
    - imron 9y ago
codingdave 9y ago
The thing that frustrated me with Lance Armstrong over so many years was the smirk on his face when asked whether he used drugs, and he would reply, "Hey, I passed the test, isn't that good enough for people to stop asking?" I suspect Facebook is falling in that same boat - technically following rules so they can answer questions the right way. But we're not seeing the smirks on their faces as they give that answer.
- goialoq 9y ago
  Besides Facebook denial and the complete lack of empirical evidence, what are you looking for? Why do people keep talking about "this one time it maybe happened", when it should be happening to everyone all the time, if it's happening at all?
rickhanlonii 9y ago
They're listening, but not to your voice or with a microphone. Facebook is listening to your data--to all of our data, all at once. They have locations, searches, clicks, messaging, photos, hashtags, and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country, everyone in your neighboorhood, everyone in the same room as you. They have enough data with such advanced analysis that on occasion they can get really close what you're thinking/doing without you explicitly telling them. They're doing this frequently enough to creep a lot of people out and they're only going to get better at it over time. What we have here is something like Turing test for privacy: a sufficiently advanced amount of data and analysis will be indistinguishable from surveillance. It's simply unnecessary to listen with a microphone. Edit: found this slide from F8 in 2015 where they said they store 300PB and process 10PB (with a P) of data per day https://www.instagram.com/p/0tUjrQKH6R https://www.instagram.com/p/0tUjrQKH6R
- glenstein 9y ago
  That's all very true and very important, but I think it misses the point of contention that many people are rightly focusing on. There's an issue of whether facebook is, despite what they say, doing some sort of data analysis that's relevant to advertising, in addition to all the other listening and analyzing they do with the rest of our data.
- wmeredith 9y ago
  This is what I came here to say. They may or may not be listening, but the end result is the same.
- colordrops 9y ago
  "all of our data" includes recorded audio.
- flashman 9y ago
  > Turing test Sorry to 'actually' you but that's phrased like Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws
api 9y ago
If this is legit it seems hard to explain in any other way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps
austinhutch 9y ago
I was skeptical until I experienced an ad in my feed which in my estimation could only attribute to data captured by a conversation had hours earlier. Of course there is the possibility of coincidence but I find it hard to believe. I took advantage of the option to see why I was shown the ad, and was told demographic information, as well as a data partnership with DLX. I would like to know if others who see and ad they suspect was displayed due to microphone captured data have this DLX data supplier source in common.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  How many conversations have you had around your phone? How many ads have you seen on FB that matched a conversation that happened earlier? Isn't this the exact definition of confirmation bias?
  - scientistem 9y ago
    Well, it’s hard to draw any conclusion about confirmation bias without understanding the first two questions :) but you’re right, this could be baader-meinhof phenomena at work.
- randycupertino 9y ago
  It did something very similar to me and really made me second guess myself, but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work. I felt so paranoid about it and was very weirded out. My backpack zipper broke when I was walking to work. When I arrived at work I told my coworker I needed to buy a new backpack. She and I talked in her office about what type of backpacks her son liked, did they have enough pockets, are the zippers strong. I never used my phone to google anything about backpacks, never looked anything or searched for a new backpack online. That same afternoon- boom backpack ads in my facebook feed. Totally creepy.
  - IanCal 9y ago
    > but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work You'd have not noticed if you saw a backpack advert at some other time. Just how many adverts do you see that aren't standing out? Huge amounts, probably. This could be quite easily explained by the frequency illusion.
oh-kumudo 9y ago
From a technical perspective, it is not very likely that they will listen to people's voice to push advertisements. They needs to listen to you ALL the time, collecting your voice from all kinds of noisy environment, uploading to their server for further analysis. And in order for this service to be profitable, they need to train model to extract the part of your conversation that hints a shopping intention. This requires infrastructure at a really large scale I don't think even FaceBook can sigh up for that. And if they have a legal department, which I assume they do and a functional one, those ideas would be killed before it moves to implementation.
- wu-ikkyu 9y ago
  >in order for this service to be profitable, they need to train model to extract the part of your conversation that hints a shopping intention So basically just listen for any time someone says a variant of "I need/want x"?
  - oh-kumudo 9y ago
    Well, there are a lot of needs: I need to go. I need some sleep. I need more time. I want to quit...like you name it.
- kevinmchugh 9y ago
  My expectation is that they could sell advertisers activation sounds on TV ads. The Facebook app would be programmed to listen for a small handful of sounds (like "hey sir"), but which correspond with eg a car ad. Then the advertisers can track consumer reach throughout the process. No speech recognition necessary, it's just another row in a database, recording an ad display. No evidence that this is what they're doing, though.
dba7dba 9y ago
I removed Facebook from my phone years ago when I learned they were accessing my sms messages. Simple.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  I'm so glad my phone doesn't allow apps to do that.
jasonrhaas 9y ago
Regardless of whether or not they are doing it purposely, the capability is certainly there. But the other data they have from cross referencing other web traffic, financial data, etc is probably much more powerful than what they could get from listening in to our conversations. However, I still turn off microphone access for facebook and instagram. It's probably not fool proof, but it can't hurt.
jparse 9y ago
I am not sure if this is real. However, there are people on YouTube talking about topics they have never typed, never cared about, or never shared on Facebook and sure enough, the ad appears. It would be great to really inspect the traffic and see if this is really the case. Independent of what Facebook claims. Either way, I am happy I have deleted it off my phone. I have never been happier each day not reading garbage and actually focusing my time on apps that improve my life and move my life forward.
j_s 9y ago
Linking to the discussion that just jumped off the front page for my own benefit when I get back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281
- Jach 9y ago
  http://kuuv.io/i/ACXDGGp.png http://kuuv.io/i/ACXDGGp.png
- j_s 9y ago
  Rumors That Facebook Is Secretly Recording You Refuse to Die | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 (Oct 2017 18:20, 80+ comments) http://hnrankings.info/15580281/ http://hnrankings.info/15580281/ Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15581114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15581114 (Oct 2017 20:30, 171+ comments) http://hnrankings.info/15581114 http://hnrankings.info/15581114 Basically the same discussion on separate stories covering the same topic, both on the front page simultaneously. The second only took off after the first was flagged off the page or something. I didn't want to summon the dupe police before I had a chance to review it a bit closer. Also didn't want to lose both to the flagging committee. Mostly planning to review participation by various HN users. #facebook #haterade PS. Neither one is worth an up-vote from me, let alone adding as a favorite!
jparse 9y ago
For anyone interested, the iOS app is composed of about 18,000 classes. Here is the dump: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/quellish/473f513fbd1310233a8e/raw/ddfa17d01435d43ee43751fb6fe17f4d0c8911c6/FBClasses.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/quellish/473f513fbd131023...
submeta 9y ago
If they do listen and present you ads based on your conversation, can't you fool it (and test it) by talking about (let's say) buying new running shoes? Shouldn't you observe ads about running shoes? Edit: added missing word
- comboy 9y ago
  There are some videos of people who did exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=U0SOxb_Lfps
  - submeta 9y ago
    Whoa, pretty creepy indeed
  - mikeash 9y ago
    I thought iPhone apps couldn’t silently listen to the microphone.
    - ggreer 9y ago
      That's correct. Apps must request access to the microphone, and iOS shows an indicator while the app is recording. This is pure confirmation bias. If someone tests this and doesn't get a relevant ad from Facebook, they won't upload a video or tell their friends. Note that even in this confirming case, it took two days before the guy saw a cat food ad. We don't know how many other ads he scrolled by before that one.
chillingeffect 9y ago
There have been plenty of stories of malware eavesdropping over smartphone microphones in the last two years. I doubt Facebook does it with their app. It's too much trouble, blatantly illegal and easy to get caught. It's most likely malwAre selling the info to fb, who has no idea how any advertisers get their info.
cyberferret 9y ago
I was totally skeptical when I first heard stories about people's feeds being curated to suit what they were talking about in front of their computers, but then a couple of things made me rethink my views. I was in the car with my friend once (both our phones were in the car with us too), and we were driving and it started raining. His wiper blades were shoddy and doing a bad job of clearing his windscreen. We had a 5 minute discussion on cleaning blades, where was the best place to get a replacement, etc. Neither of us picked up our phones, or did a search on 'wiper blades', nor asked Siri etc. about nearest places to buy. But the next day, for the first time ever, I started seeing ads for wiper blades on my feed. They disappeared after a few days, but it was spooky, as it was for an item that I have never ever discussed, or seen on my feed before, or since. Another anecdote. I was sitting working in my office the other day, when my son came in to talk to me about something. While chatting, he picked up a bass guitar that sits behind my desk and started playing the riff from 'Seinfeld'. I may have said something like "Oh, the Seinfeld theme - you know that was played on a synth and not an actual bass guitar?". Our conversation though, was about something else altogether. A day later, on my feed, I see an ad about "How they played the Seinfeld theme" [0]. A totally specific ad like that, within 24 hours, totally unrelated to any searched I had done in my past. This one too disappeared within a couple of days. [0] - https://twitter.com/dsabar/status/924763005014831104 https://twitter.com/dsabar/status/924763005014831104
- IanCal 9y ago
  This is called the "Frequency Illusion" (also often called / a similar thing is called the "Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon").
  - cyberferret 9y ago
    I would disagree with that phenomenon. In direct contrast, my awareness of these ads kicked into overdrive after seeing them for the first time, so I was hyper aware and looking out for them afterwards, which is why I noticed they disappeared a day or two after popping up. Since then, my feed has been a bland sea of adverts for mattresses, knives etc. that almost all of my friends complain about seeing. I don't use ad blockers, due to my development work in web apps etc. I like my browsers to be as stock as possible, and I do actually at least glance at nearly all ads I see in FB etc. just to see how their targeting is being skewed by my search history or messaging online. These were two quite distinct cases of ads that I've never seen before, which popped up within 24 hours of me talking about (but not doing anything else online related to them) and then disappearing soon after. Sure, an anecdotal sample size of 2 could just be pure coincidence, but something about it still doesn't sit right with me.
em3rgent0rdr 9y ago
I've learned to never believe an entity that says they won't do something without any way to verify such a claim.
dictum 9y ago
On a sufficiently short-lived and well-targeted A/B test, nobody knows you're a listening bug.
elorant 9y ago
Sooner or later we'll have to get in the offensive and break their business model by rendering ads ineffective. It's either that or the Internet we used to know won't exist for much longer. As long as they don't seem to give a fuck about user privacy we don't need to play nice.
unabridged 9y ago
I think people are really underestimating how much they can use your friends search data (especially ones you have been in close proximity to) for your ads. Or how big their interest "niche" is. There are only so many categories of web users, even on the very fringe there are probably 10k who think and search just like you. And when they are searching/clicking on products, Facebook will show you similar things.
- bpanon 9y ago
  I have a story about this. A girl I was seeing years ago was looking for a new apartment. She texted me telling me she found a new apartment on 20th and Gladstone Ave and asked me if I wanted to go with her to see it. Minutes later, I get a Google Now update saying "It would take you 43 minutes to get to 2020 Gladstone Ave if you leave now". I thought it was cool at first - Google Now was getting really helpful with the driving suggestions. I also thought it was strange that it was for a specific address - I thought that was a glitch, or the nearest address to that intersection, although Google Now has worked with intersections in the past. I thought Google telling me the time it would take to travel to her apartment showing was impressive enough to actually tell this girl what my phone did. She was not amused and thought that I had hacked her phone. She wanted to know how I knew the exact address of the apartment! I was curious how this could have been possible since she never texted me the exact address and found out she did look it up on Google Maps. So it's clear how Google had the data but sharing it with me seemed like a huge breach of privacy. Perhaps the craziest part of all this is that not 5 minutes after telling this girl what Google did, when I went back to take a screenshot of the suggestion - the Google Now card CHANGED to 20th and Gladstone Ave! I was seriously wondering they were analyzing my conversation afterwards expressing my concern of this breach of privacy and had the "privacy invasion" level turned down a degree.
chis 9y ago
Facebook obviously doesn't do this, but I wonder how this will end. Lots of people wanting to regulate Facebook right now, maybe some ineffective laws will get passed.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
eurticket 9y ago
With all the data gathering and listening, how doesn't any organization get the information to stop the attacks that we know about?
twostorytower 9y ago
I don't see definitive proof one way or the other, but I've never given Facebook microphone access on my iPhone. And many others users claiming they've received targeted ads haven't either. But something interesting that is being pointed out on Reddit is that they can use your gyroscope to detect vibration and convert it to soundwaves when your phone is on a flat surface. The PM at Facebook denies listening to the microphone, but what about the gyroscope data? Technically, what he is saying could be a true statement, but still invading privacy just as much.
wozer 9y ago
If we (theoretically) assume that Facebook actually does listen and use the data for advertising: what would be the legal consequences? Could this become the next Volkwagen?
heydonovan 9y ago
What can we do to prevent this? Use another service? Make it more difficult to link information together with use of per-website generated emails, burner phones, etc? Just seems there is room for something to come along and change the game, just not too sure what that thing is.
bpanon 9y ago
A fairly reliable and simple test is this: leave your phone around content for several hours of a different language and see if ads related to that language show up. It's surprising to me that people here are still debating this. I believe it's been going on since the original iPhone came out after a friend told me a very specific product appeared for her on Facebook immediately after she spoke about it and went to go look it up on her phone. I don't think Facebook would stop at any measure to get all the data they can from you if they can get away with it and frankly anyone who does is extremely naive. It's right there available to them. There has never been and may never again be a time when companies (particularly Facebook and Google) to obtain as much sensitive data as is available to them from us without our knowledge, without external oversight, and without repercussions due to the lack of legislation.
beeskneecaps 9y ago
Facebook is definitely creeping on your conversations
kmm 9y ago
A few days ago I ate a chili pepper out of boredom, and after finding out what a bad idea that was, I opened Reddit. The frontpage of /r/todayilearned had a post about someone learning that birds can't detect capsaicin and that peppers evolved it to deter mammals (which have grinding teeth). These kinds of cosmic coincidences happen to me and everyone else every few weeks, and they mean absolutely nothing. We're just wired to see patterns. I (and millions more) see hundreds of Reddit posts per day, you (and millions more) see hundreds of ads per day. A crazy coincidence every 10,000 ads isn't very strange. Something like this should be piss easy to prove, especially on Android. Traffic monitoring, monitoring when exactly the microphone is accessed on a rooted phone, anything really. The fact that this rumor has been going about for years and nobody has found anything, means it's just nonsense.
oculusthrift 9y ago
i don’t get why this is a debate. can’t we just use wire shark or something similar and see if audio data is sent to fb?
croatoan 9y ago
What I'm getting out of "We don't use your microphone for ads" is that they use your microphone, they just don't use it for ads. Which as many comments have already stated makes sense because you don't really need the recordings to determine a suitable ad when they are already getting all the data they need from just using facebook. What I think they do is, they record everything using the microphone, and they store it if you are a person of interest. A person of interest could be that maybe you have a over 1000 friends or something, maybe your a ceo of some tech company, maybe you're a lead programmer at intel, maybe you're someone the US government wants to track, maybe your a senators staff member, maybe you work for the Skunk Works at Lockheed, maybe you said a key word/phrase that throws you into the 'person of interest' category like 'electrogravitic propulsion'. When these surveillance companies do this type of stuff, they do it to people of interest, and if they ever need to put the squeeze on someone, or steal important information like get secret information about a stock trade or something, they go to that person of interests microphone records (which probably get transcribed into text by some program) and search for whatever they want to know. This is why this shit should be utterly banned, it controls people, it steals from people, it destroys innovation and scientific progress before they ever get off the ground, and its just plain manipulative.
vita17 9y ago
According to this post on Reddit, Apple gave Uber access to a private API. He's speculating that Facebook might have access to a private API and is using it to spy on its users. Does anybody have more information about this? https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/dp2gshm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user...
- UncleMeat 9y ago
  It would be trivial to decompile the app and see if they were using some hidden or undocumented API. Why has nobody ever been able to find actual evidence in the code?
mistercow 9y ago
One thing the internet does which is super incompatible with how people deal with information is that it amplifies anecdotes and selection bias. If you were just talking to a sample including a small fraction of your friends and acquaintances, and you found that like 10 of them had noticed that Facebook seemed to be showing ads based on their conversations, that would be compelling evidence that something was up. And since for the vast majority of human history, that was the kind of information you had access to, that's the way we tend to process things. But now you can go online and mention this weird thing that happened to you, and a thousand other people will all see it. Suddenly you have super high odds of a "cold hit", even though the phenomenon was purely random. And to make matters worse, it's not purely random. Facebook has algorithms that are trying, often successfully, to model your life based on the information you give it. So the chances of "eery" ad targeting are significantly higher than if it were just random. I think we're going to see this kind of conspiracy theory more and more as time goes on, and we need to figure out cultural tools to counteract this problem.
thinkingemote 9y ago
Many people here may have missed something. From the link in the article, Facebook does listen using your microphone. They say so themselves, they say that you have to give the app permission, and that it's used to listen to say a background music or TV show. they also deny using it to target ads, but they say they do use it for other things. now, I also remember them writing that they only listen when the app is open and a status is being written, but I'm not sure about that statement. Anyhow, the key thing is that Facebook does overtly and publicly use your microphone with its app.
- Karunamon 9y ago
  We can look at the OS permissions to see what it’s doing in the background. Facebook definitely doesn’t have the ability to listen to the mic in the background on iOS unless you’re implying that Apple created a back door for them...
CharlesDodgson 9y ago
I wonder do FB buy user ad preference data from 3rd parties, that may in turn buy them from another listening app. If I was FB, I'd either process the audio on the device to avoid network traffic, or buy the results from a partner, to keep the actual listening at arms length. It wouldn't be that hard to imagine another ad-tech company collecting the data in some other app and feeding the data back to FB. I can't imagine FB would be asking as many questions from a 3rd party as it would to internal teams.
Shinchy 9y ago
Why don't we just try this out, get a fresh device and block location services then create a new Facebook account. Make sure you don't search for the thing you're aiming to get Ads for (Cat Food, Carpets, Jumper, etc.) on the device itself or nearby devices. Then just talk about those things and see if the ads come up.
a_imho 9y ago
I'm not versed in the facebook tos, but it very well could be included. If that bothers someone they should just stop using facebook, what's so hard about it?
haihaibye 9y ago
To add an anecdote to counteract confirmation bias: I heard this rumor months ago and we started talking about motorbikes with smart phones held up for a few days (20+ mentions). We saw no motorbike ads.
m-p-3 9y ago
No one should trust what they say they can or cannot do. What we can only assume is their capabilities in doing it. This is where end-to-end encryption is important. If you can't encrypt it in a way that only the other end can see it, then assume that someone in the middle can eavesdrop it.
ireallydonot 9y ago
Facebook is liar and privacy violator!!

302 points by Jerry2 9y ago

Dozens of times in the past few years I've been served relevant ads on some topic instantly after discussing it in person in proximity to a smartphone. I've encountered countless other anecdotal stories from friends. When this happens I feel an acute sense of violation and vulnerability. It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena.

misnome 9y ago
Coincidence is a less sinister explanation. You never take note of the adverts if they weren’t immediately relevant.
- Harimwakairi 9y ago
  But that's so much less entertaining to speculate about! Why should obvious truth get in the way of our fun?
- api 9y ago
  This seems like something that could be settled via some kind of study, like playing audio to the phone and recording what ads get shown and doing it to a population of phones and social media accounts.
  - placeybordeaux 9y ago
    You can also monitor the network traffic, audio takes up a decent chunk of data. You can decompile the app and see what it does.
Cacti 9y ago
You can't imagine a less sinister explanation other than Facebook or some other entity is secretly recording your voice and the voices of millions of people, in violation of numerous state and federal laws, through their smartphone microphones, uploading it to their servers surreptitiously, performing voice analysis on it to determine who is speaking out of 350,000,000 possible cases (presumably they've already cataloged everyone in the country somehow?), and then use that to serve you more targeted advertising?! I mean, really?
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
- smashingfiasco 9y ago
  I mean, they did break iOS platform rules and pulled some tricks to keep the app open in the background all of the time by sending an empty audio beffer to the phone for "playback." So yes, really.
- zwtaylor 9y ago
  True, it seems far-fetched at first. We should keep in mind that a even few short years ago theorizing about the US Government operating a widespread domestic electronic surveillance dragnet was still the realm of delusional conspiracy theorists.
  - gaius 9y ago
    I remember the days when we thought archiving Usenet was technically impossible... Then DejaNews announced they'd been doing it for years already...
  - Cacti 9y ago
    I don't see how that matters. Besides, people have been discussing widespread, domestic electronic surveillance for decades far outside conspiracy fringes. The Clipper chip, as just one example, was a big deal at the time and received widespread, mainstream coverage.
- fergie 9y ago
  Not sure if it is so far fetched to do some lightweight voice analysis (client side) and store significant terms in the same way that you would store search history.
smashingfiasco 9y ago
I can add to that anecdote... I was discussing which podcast app was best for Android with a friend, and in the presence of her Android phone. The next day, she started getting served ads for podcast apps all over the place. Keep in mind, this was someone who would have been completely new to podcasting and have never searched for podcasts or podcast apps before. Made both of us highly suspicious.
0x4f3759df 9y ago
I was using google navigation and someone in the back asked "what do you mean one-size fits all"... then my phone which was only running navigator chimed in "one-size fits all means blah blah blah" was definitely creepy.
- finnn 9y ago
  Google Maps navigation feature listens for verbal input (although it's supposed to be triggered by the wake word) to do things like add stops and such without touching it
warrenmiller 9y ago
Read up on the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon
objclxt 9y ago
> It's hard to imagine a less sinister explanation for this phenomena. You just forget all the other signal you've giving. Funnily enough, last week somebody was trying to convince me that Facebook was recording their every word. "I was telling a friend about a recent trip to Thailand", they said, "and I immediately saw an ad for Thai Tea". I asked if he'd used Facebook when he was in Thailand. He had. Which is more likely: Facebook is recording every conversation of every user on their app and mini them for ads or the advertiser in question just targeted people who had recently been to Thailand.

quickben 9y ago

https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wakes-mobile-world-snapdragon-voice-activation https://www.qualcomm.com/news/onq/2013/02/20/snapdragon-wake... https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-sdk-device-speech-processing https://developer.qualcomm.com/blog/using-qualcomm-hexagon-s... "Industry wide adoption" 2013 The rest is PR.

weaksauce 9y ago
Has there been confirmation that a chip like that is inside any of these smartphones?
- quickben 9y ago
  From the first link, they list Snapdragon 800 family. Early 2014, phones that used it were: http://www.freewaresquad.com/2014/02/18/phones-with-snapdragon-800-processor/ http://www.freewaresquad.com/2014/02/18/phones-with-snapdrag... Today that CPU series is everywhere.
  - weaksauce 9y ago
    interesting. thanks... I wonder if they have something like this for ios devices? seems like they have similar capabilities via the "hey siri" or whatever it is but I am curious if there is a hack to allow it to use that all the time from userland.
halflings 9y ago
IMHO this is irrelevant to what is being discussed here. > enables devices powered by Snapdragon 800 processors to be “woken up” by a custom voice command (beginning with a custom phrase set by the device OEM like “Hey Snapdragon”, for example) Because they are always on and have to use minimal power, these chips are used to recognise a very specific term (probably why these companies don't let you customise how you summon the assistant), and cannot do anything like voice transcription, network calls, ... (which would just kill your battery).

amiga-workbench 9y ago

Its proprietary software, I have no idea if its malware or not, so I stick to the mobile website and do not install their apps.

api 9y ago

Wouldn't it be possible to detect this? If this is happening then it must require some amount of CPU and memory use on the device, which even if hidden from the OS can be detected via power use and heat dissipation. It should be possible to indirectly measure a phone's CPU load (including any hidden processors) by filming it in the infrared and/or by attaching it to power and measuring the wattage consumed from the supply. If this is happening it must also require some network I/O. Something must be phoning home and reporting the data if the data is to be useful. Note that there is an intrinsic trade-off between the heat dissipation angle and the bandwidth angle. If the device is doing parsing, speech recognition, AI, etc. locally then it must be consuming more energy and dissipating more heat. If the device does these things remotely it must upload more data. Compressed audio is far more bandwidth intensive than digested meta-data. This seems like something security researchers can and should look into.

smashingfiasco 9y ago
Remember the time they kept the app open in the background on iOS devices by sending an empty audio buffer to the phone for playback? People started discovering that after iOS introduced the battery/power usage section in the Settings app.
dlubarov 9y ago
Wouldn't it be easier to reverse engineer their app? It seems easy enough, at least one the Android side. You could use something like baksmali to convert all the dex code to smali, then grep that for calls to AudioRecord/MediaRecorder and figure out what triggers that code. That's why I'm skeptical that Facebook would do this -- it seems like a terrible business decision given the high chance of getting caught, either by reverse engineering or a whistleblower.

sp527 9y ago

Once happened while remarking on the Fruit Loops shake at Burger King. Opened Facebook minutes later and got a Fruit Loops ad. I assure you I don’t message, post, or in any other way remotely suggest an affinity for Fruit Loops. Commenting on it at Burger King was the definition of a one-off incident. I guess another possible explanation is some very sophisticated combination of location tracking and Kellogg’s targeting people they know will be primed by that promotional item. And then of course it could always just be an amazing coincidence. All I know is I revoked microphone permission after that. EDIT: Something just occurred to me. Facebook doesn’t have to be the one using your microphone to target ads. The ad buyers just have to have a way to match your phone to your ID (which they can easily; there was a site posted here a while back that sells that) and then listen in through ANY one of the apps you have installed. If this were the scheme, Facebook could reasonably get away with saying “WE don’t use your microphone to target ads.”

ChrisAntaki 9y ago
Out of curiosity, why did you remark on the Fruit Loops shake? Could it be due to an ad campaign that started prior to your remark, and continues after it?
- sp527 9y ago
  We were going through the drive-thru and saw a sign. It seemed so magnificently revolting, I wondered at the time if it was a red herring to drive word of mouth.
  - eclipxe 9y ago
    It’s a great shake btw. Tastes amazing. Seriously.
jlgaddis 9y ago
I was once sitting at a bar having a beer, chatting with the bartender (one of my best friends) and the guy sitting next to me, whom I had never met before. I pulled out my phone to show my friend something that had been posted on Facebook and, while browsing Facebook right after that, the app showed the guy sitting right next to me as the first person under "People You May Know". I had not "checked in" or posted any updates while I was there, FWIW. It was at that point that I removed all permissions (i.e. location tracking) that I could from the Facebook app. More on-topic: I recall reading that the Facebook app would activate the microphone when one was posting a status update, apparently listening for things like a movie playing in the background and such. ETA: Related Snopes articles: https://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/facebooklisten.asp https://www.snopes.com/computer/facebook/facebooklisten.asp https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/04/professor-claims-facebook-is-eavesdropping-on-their-users/ https://www.snopes.com/2016/06/04/professor-claims-facebook-...

billphipps 9y ago

the neo cons, they're onto us, man

thrill 9y ago

As long as it is possible (closed source software and hardware which is unaudited by trusted organizations), then it's going to continue to be assumed to be happening.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15578016

nothis 9y ago

I used to dismiss these rumors as paranoia/conspiracy theories in a maybe naive application of Occam's razor. But concrete leaks and tech news of recent years made me a believer. I sure believe Facebook is capable of this, nowadays. The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. All I ever hear is anecdotes.

f_allwein 9y ago
> concrete leaks and tech news of recent years which ones do you mean?
cvsh 9y ago
>All I ever hear is anecdotes. The fact that there is no hard evidence makes me very skeptical. Every anecdote is explainable another way. Someone in the comments said they were having a conversation about storage units and saw an ad for storage units immediately after. Even if they had never searched for storage units -- and can we really be sure? That would be easy to forget -- Facebook might just have extrapolated they they would need a storage unit from related searches, like searching for a moving company. I would be willing to bet this type of algorithmic extrapolation explains every one of the microphone-ad-conspiracy stories.
hobofan 9y ago
> The only thing that makes me skeptical is that there should be reproduceable cases someone has documented for concrete evidence. I'll throw another layer on the conspiracy pile and say they deactivate that behavior for anyone they notice trying to prove it, similar to Uber's Greyball.

7373737373 9y ago

Like webcams, microphones should (and even be required to) have a status LED.

mingabunga 9y ago

I don't play golf or have any interest in it, but I was talking to my brother about him using golf carts on his farm as vehicles. I kept getting golf cart adverts in Facebook for the next month. Maybe it used location data to suggest we might be interested in the same thing, but it was a bit weird.

Feniks 9y ago

I know that smart TVs and the now defunct Kinect have the ability to monitor conversations. Hell I remember when I first used Soundhound! I was flabbergasted, what will they think of next. But I also know corporations are usually scrupulous about following laws so unless there is something in Facebook's ToS/EULA that mentions doing this I'm skeptical.

QAPereo 9y ago
Um... VW?
throwaway613834 9y ago
> so unless there is something in Facebook's ToS/EULA that mentions doing this I'm skeptical I don't see why the vague terms in their data policy [1] couldn't include audio (all-caps are my own emphases): > We collect information FROM or about the computers, PHONES, or other devices where you install or access our Services, depending on the permissions you’ve granted. [...] Here are some EXAMPLES of the information we collect: > - Device locations, including specific geographic locations, such as through GPS, Bluetooth, or WiFi signals. If device location is merely an example of information they gather from my phone then why couldn't audio just as easily be another example? [1] https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy https://www.facebook.com/full_data_use_policy

uptown 9y ago

One thing I've wondered was that Facebook began showing the recent photos you'd taken at the top of the app, and prompted you to share them. Are they sending every photo you take to their servers to feed it back to you at the top of your stream? I realize they could implement this feature by displaying local photos without sending them to their servers, but I've never seen confirmation that photos remain on your device only until you post. I uninstalled the app awhile back, so maybe they don't do this anymore, but anybody have any insights into how they handle your photos?

nilved 9y ago

There's an easy way to verify this: run tcpdump and record it happening. The fact that nobody has done this, instead only offering anecdotes, strongly suggests that these are coincidences or from other forms of targeting.

throwaway613834 9y ago
tcpdump? How do you record HTTPS connections (with pinned certificates, I might add) via tcpdump?
- objclxt 9y ago
  Regardless, it’s easy enough to dump HTTPS traffic (pinned or otherwise) if you have root access to the client, which in the case of Android is not difficult to get.
  - throwaway613834 9y ago
    > Regardless, it’s easy enough to dump HTTPS traffic (pinned or otherwise) if you have root access to the client, which in the case of Android is not difficult to get. Hm, well okay, would you mind explaining the easy procedure that lets you capture Facebook traffic then? I have tried lots of different methods (Fiddler, Xposed modules, etc.) with root access and have failed. It's no problem in theory, but practice is another matter...
    - nilved 9y ago
      If you have root access to one end of encryption, you necessarily can inspect and save it. The way I would do this is by issuing a certificate for facebook.com that I mark as trusted on the device. This will let you do a man in the middle "attack." But you can probably do this directly on the device: just look for where the encryption is taking place, and intercept it.
      - throwaway613834 9y ago

denzil_correa 9y ago

> "I run ads product at Facebook. We don't - and have never - used your microphone for ads. Just not true," Mr Goldman wrote. Personally, I am so used to corp speak and word play by major companies that it is difficult to take anything at face value. Therefore, I think the nature of the question asked to Facebook should be different. It should be on what they do rather do they do X. So, here's my question - "What does Facebook use data gathered from user microphones across any devices for?"

glenstein 9y ago
I was about to leave an extremely similar comment, but I was going to frame it in terms of the NSA "direct access" story. I got the impression from that story that immediate denials from tech companies, which seemed categorical, turned out to hinge on which magic words were used. In this case, when I read a sentence like "We don't use your microphone for ads" I end up doing that game where you re-read the sentence over and over and emphasize a different word each time, trying to guess which one is the magic word.
- hexane360 9y ago
  "We don't use your microphone for ads, your phone uses its microphone for our ads" /s
- trophycase 9y ago
  "We don't serve you advertisements through your microphone."
  - zionic 9y ago
    My favorite is "WE" don't, but our partners do.
- TazeTSchnitzel 9y ago
  We don't use your microphone for ads
- zild3d 9y ago

huntermeyer 9y ago

Couple doesn't own cats. Talked about cat food to test if Facebook is listening. Started getting ads in FB for cat food: https://hooktube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://hooktube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

j_s 9y ago

Technicalities and choice of words are amazing ways to deny what isn't exactly happening here. For example, why use the word 'recording' when the problem is accessing the microphone at all... Facebook doesn't have to 'record' to stream the audio to their server for audio recognition without 'recording' anything. Of course all of this is just from the title of the article but the paranoid will pretty much always be able to find wiggle room.

firefoxd 9y ago

They do record your conversation [1] > Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fingerprint is sent to our servers to try and match it against our database of audio and TV fingerprints. By design, we do not store fingerprints from your device for any amount of time. And in any event, the fingerprints can’t be reversed into the original audio because they don’t contain enough information. And my previous comment :[2] > Notice how they say they do not store sound or recordings. But what if it is converted to text? Notice below they say that the fingerprint cannot be reversed into the original audio because it doesn't contain enough information. Text cannot be converted to the ORIGINAL audio but it can be converted to audio. This may be just me being paranoid, but I do know that legalese is designed exactly to say something without saying everything. [1] http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-share-and-discover-music-tv-and-movies/ http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-sh... [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=foxfired https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=foxfired

thisacctforreal 9y ago
The length of the audio snippets they fingerprint is pertinent information. If it’s syllable- or word-length fingerprints it’s not much solace that they won’t be able to get the original audio.

habosa 9y ago

I just don't think anyone could record an analyze audio constantly without absolutely killing battery life. We're saved by the hardware.

rxever 9y ago

Once it happened to me that Facebook has shown me under "People You May Know" a person that was on the same WiFi as I was. We had zero mutual friends and no known connection prior.

ikeboy 9y ago
IP address is obviously sent to Facebook
thsowers 9y ago
Tagging users that have the same IP address seems to be a lot less sinister then what people are claiming

anotherelise 9y ago

https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/ https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/

ceejayoz 9y ago

I'm inclined to dismiss it as confirmation bias, but I've had this experience personally - a conversation followed shortly by an extremely specific advertisement on FB shortly thereafter.

tensor 9y ago
I wonder how likely it is that this sort of thing happens without a mic being involved. Consider that Facebook already mines all sorts of Facebook data, as well as data from websites you visit. They much have a pretty good profile of people's interests. Given that, it's fairly probably that you will be shown ads about things that you are interested in, and it's fairly probably that you'll talk about these topics with friends. Given this and the number of people that use Facebook, it's probably not that unlikely that your experience happens simply by chance fairly frequently.
- fiatjaf 9y ago
  The odds of something like that happening JUST AFTER you've spoken aloud about it should be small. Too small even for a dozen "random" events, even considering the number of Facebook users.
teraflop 9y ago
As suggested in the comments on Reddit, there's another possible explanation for this -- someone else in the conversation does a search based on what you were talking about, clicks on a result that sends tracking data to Facebook, and then the ads are retargeted to you based on a shared public IP address.
- rickhanlonii 9y ago
  Could be shared IP or even just "target people located near people who are targets" since they have location data
- ceejayoz 9y ago
  The last time I noticed this, it was a conversation between my wife and I, and I (we) poked around in her search history for that reason. Nothing that I could see, and it was within minutes of the conversation. All that said, I still lean towards confirmation bias.

5ilv3r 9y ago

They don't at all deny listening to conversations in this article. They only deny using that information for advertising. Now about the confirmation bias thing, it seems more likely to me that your credit card history or the store member card purchase history is being mined.

Overtonwindow 9y ago

I think the risk versus reward for Facebook and other companies is very high. All things being equal, I think it's more likely than not they will record things, will listen for words you say, and use that. The risk is enormous if it comes out with proof, but let's say they only listen a small percentage of the time, that kind of AI analysis is priceless.

dhimes 9y ago
There's no risk. If there was then there would be a statue of Edward Snowden on the National Mall. People are too stupid to care. Maybe I'm just having a bad day.
- nihonde 9y ago
  No, you’re right. There is zero accountability for this kind of stuff. No US government agency or US-based business has ever suffered for it. I defy anyone to prove me wrong.
cooper12 9y ago
I doubt it will make a difference to most people. The staunch pro-privacy stance really only exists on tech-savvy forums like HN. Go on reddit sometimes and observe how people will say "so what if Google has all my info, it's useful and free". If Zuckerberg calling his users dumb fucks for trusting him didn't get them off the platform, a "small" privacy violation like this won't either.
- dsharlet 9y ago
  This reddit post is the very top of /r/all right now: https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user... And the general sentiment appears to be very far from what you claim. I think it's possible that this issue is going to come to a head this time around. I don't know what the outcome will be. Just saying it's confirmation bias (the likely real explanation?) may not be enough to satisfy people.

trophycase 9y ago

Of course they deny it. Even if they did there is absolutely no way they'd admit it. This article asserts nothing.

cc81 9y ago
On the other hand seeing as this must be done client side then someone should be able to do an investigation and see if Facebook sends voice data to their servers. And not to mention how many engineers that work on Facebook that could be whistle blowers.

0x0 9y ago

Couldn't somebody decompile the android or iOS app and try to find evidence for one way or the other?

ehsankia 9y ago
Or just have a proper methodology with many samples, control group, etc.
- tedunangst 9y ago
  Everybody who has seen a Facebook ad not directly related to a previous conversation upvote this comment. For science.
- Sargos 9y ago
  The kind of people who believe these conspiracy theories about Facebook are not the kind of people who believe in scientific methodology. Fuzzy bigfoot syndrome and all.
bhouston 9y ago
One can also instrument the app or Andriod to see when the microphone is accessed and if that data is sent them over the internet.
corkraider 9y ago
I'm sure many people have tried to do that and have found nothing. But having found nothing is not a definite proof of such a thing not existing so nobody published their results.

crooked-v 9y ago

No microphone access is needed for the spooky ultra-targeted advertising claims. You just have to keep in mind that Facebook is cross-referencing all your information with everyone physically near you (even people without Facebook accounts, as they can be extrapolated from their relatives and from photo geodata and tags), and cross-referencing all of those results with cookies from ads all over the web and with purchase history results from credit card companies and retailers.

ojosilva 9y ago

But has anyone scientifically validated any of these assumptions? It doesn't seem very hard. Speak, then visit pages with FB ads and take note. Seems like the internets has taken these serious accusations as some sort of corporate conspiracy but I haven't seen any independent, credible study of how Facebook's apps (confirmed) access to microphone are actually being translated into ads.

bhouston 9y ago
Can not one decompile the Facebook app, or just somehow instrument it to see when it accesses the microphone feed?
- tedunangst 9y ago
  None of the people who think this is happening can.
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Can one not do network traffic analysis to see what it sends? Would it be that hard?
Spooky23 9y ago
Put a few people with the Facebook app and messenger in the room and talk about gold coins.

feelin_googley 9y ago

It is interesting that they feel the need to officially deny it. The Twitter user co-hosts a podcast where users can call in to tell him whether they think Facebook is listening or not. One could argue, from a PR perspective, it does not matter whether Facebook is listening or not. First, some users do not trust them. Maybe Facebook is worried about those users telling other users. Second, some users believe it is technically feasible to listen. Finally, there is no legal/regulatory framework in the United States to effectively stop Facebook from listening[FN1], if they wanted to do so. They have clear business incentives to listen because the objective is to gather more personal data about users than their competitors. NB: Added "in the United States" for clarification. FN1. Incorrect? What are the theories of liability? What are the sources of law or regulation in the United States? Is injury required? What is the injury? How does one prove the injury?

notimetorelax 9y ago
Hm... what about the expectation of privacy? I’m guessing in some states and countries this is illegal.
Spooky23 9y ago
If they listen and record conversations that include conference calls, there’s a high probability that’s an issue.

imroot 9y ago

A few weeks ago, I went into a Lenscrafters because I needed some cleaning wipes for my glasses. I have Wifi, Bluetooth, and Location services disabled for Facebook. Someone messaged me on Facebook Messenger, I responded, put my phone back in my pocket, and finished the transaction, and then left Lenscrafters and walked down to the store that I was actually in the mall to see. Within the day, I started seeing contextual ads for eyeglasses in my facebook feed, along with ads in other apps for eyeglasses. I'm only suspecting that there's a service that does some flavor of ultrasonic beacon/listening technology, and facebook (along with DFP and the other large ad markets) are buying that service in troves.

ec109685 9y ago
Or like the article said, you just noticed the contextual eyeglass ads because you had just been to lens crafters and it seemed weird to you. Also, by contextual ads, do you mean the eye glass ads were related to context they were shown next to? The other explanation is Facebook has data sharing agreements with the payment instrument you used for the wipes.
- imroot 9y ago
  I had been to Lenscrafters, but, there were no location services (no wifi, gps, or bluetooth) turned on...just my cell phone data. By contextual ads, I mean, "News stream ad/in game ad" -- basically, anything that had been targeted to be sent to my device. I believe I read something about Facebook using DataLogic info (which tries to tie payment instruments to advertising clients), but, apparently the music supplier for LensCrafters also has "Audio Beacon" technology for their clients to use (http://us.moodmedia.com/social-solutions/ http://us.moodmedia.com/social-solutions/), so, it could be one of the two.
  - ec109685 9y ago
    Rather than contextual, I think “native ad” is closer to what Facebook’s ads are versus Google’s old system that tried to match ads with the content they were shown next to.
9y ago

brad0 9y ago

> "At work, happened to me though earlier this year. Working as a barista, got a burn, talked to my partner in person about it, went to Target, bought the burn cream, and saw an ad on FB for the exact product I purchased. Never searched for product either," wrote Brigitte Bonasoro. Facebook has data sharing agreements with many, many companies. It's most likely that the cream was bought with a card then linked together with your facebook profile. It's not that hard, especially when you use the same email identifier for all those loyalty cards you have. EDIT A video that explains what Facebook does https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dystopia_just_to_make_people_click_on_ads https://www.ted.com/talks/zeynep_tufekci_we_re_building_a_dy...

aluhut 9y ago
Not sure if this is better or worse.
- notyourwork 9y ago
  Agreed and I am not sure the majority of population realize this or would be accepting of it.
- madeofpalk 9y ago
  Well, I'm (marginally) more comfortable with a company like Facebook having this data compared to... Equifax
  - jacobush 9y ago
    Why? FB has agency to actually do something, probably horrible with it. Equifax would just get hacked.
    - aluhut 9y ago
      Don't forget the sell out when they finally jump the shark.
  - imron 9y ago

codingdave 9y ago

The thing that frustrated me with Lance Armstrong over so many years was the smirk on his face when asked whether he used drugs, and he would reply, "Hey, I passed the test, isn't that good enough for people to stop asking?" I suspect Facebook is falling in that same boat - technically following rules so they can answer questions the right way. But we're not seeing the smirks on their faces as they give that answer.

goialoq 9y ago
Besides Facebook denial and the complete lack of empirical evidence, what are you looking for? Why do people keep talking about "this one time it maybe happened", when it should be happening to everyone all the time, if it's happening at all?

rickhanlonii 9y ago

They're listening, but not to your voice or with a microphone. Facebook is listening to your data--to all of our data, all at once. They have locations, searches, clicks, messaging, photos, hashtags, and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country, everyone in your neighboorhood, everyone in the same room as you. They have enough data with such advanced analysis that on occasion they can get really close what you're thinking/doing without you explicitly telling them. They're doing this frequently enough to creep a lot of people out and they're only going to get better at it over time. What we have here is something like Turing test for privacy: a sufficiently advanced amount of data and analysis will be indistinguishable from surveillance. It's simply unnecessary to listen with a microphone. Edit: found this slide from F8 in 2015 where they said they store 300PB and process 10PB (with a P) of data per day https://www.instagram.com/p/0tUjrQKH6R https://www.instagram.com/p/0tUjrQKH6R

glenstein 9y ago
That's all very true and very important, but I think it misses the point of contention that many people are rightly focusing on. There's an issue of whether facebook is, despite what they say, doing some sort of data analysis that's relevant to advertising, in addition to all the other listening and analyzing they do with the rest of our data.
wmeredith 9y ago
This is what I came here to say. They may or may not be listening, but the end result is the same.
colordrops 9y ago
"all of our data" includes recorded audio.
flashman 9y ago
> Turing test Sorry to 'actually' you but that's phrased like Clarke's third law: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clarke%27s_three_laws

api 9y ago

If this is legit it seems hard to explain in any other way: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0SOxb_Lfps

austinhutch 9y ago

I was skeptical until I experienced an ad in my feed which in my estimation could only attribute to data captured by a conversation had hours earlier. Of course there is the possibility of coincidence but I find it hard to believe. I took advantage of the option to see why I was shown the ad, and was told demographic information, as well as a data partnership with DLX. I would like to know if others who see and ad they suspect was displayed due to microphone captured data have this DLX data supplier source in common.

madeofpalk 9y ago
How many conversations have you had around your phone? How many ads have you seen on FB that matched a conversation that happened earlier? Isn't this the exact definition of confirmation bias?
- scientistem 9y ago
  Well, it’s hard to draw any conclusion about confirmation bias without understanding the first two questions :) but you’re right, this could be baader-meinhof phenomena at work.
randycupertino 9y ago
It did something very similar to me and really made me second guess myself, but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work. I felt so paranoid about it and was very weirded out. My backpack zipper broke when I was walking to work. When I arrived at work I told my coworker I needed to buy a new backpack. She and I talked in her office about what type of backpacks her son liked, did they have enough pockets, are the zippers strong. I never used my phone to google anything about backpacks, never looked anything or searched for a new backpack online. That same afternoon- boom backpack ads in my facebook feed. Totally creepy.
- IanCal 9y ago
  > but there is no other explanation other than it used my microphone to listen to my conversation at work You'd have not noticed if you saw a backpack advert at some other time. Just how many adverts do you see that aren't standing out? Huge amounts, probably. This could be quite easily explained by the frequency illusion.

oh-kumudo 9y ago

From a technical perspective, it is not very likely that they will listen to people's voice to push advertisements. They needs to listen to you ALL the time, collecting your voice from all kinds of noisy environment, uploading to their server for further analysis. And in order for this service to be profitable, they need to train model to extract the part of your conversation that hints a shopping intention. This requires infrastructure at a really large scale I don't think even FaceBook can sigh up for that. And if they have a legal department, which I assume they do and a functional one, those ideas would be killed before it moves to implementation.

wu-ikkyu 9y ago
>in order for this service to be profitable, they need to train model to extract the part of your conversation that hints a shopping intention So basically just listen for any time someone says a variant of "I need/want x"?
- oh-kumudo 9y ago
  Well, there are a lot of needs: I need to go. I need some sleep. I need more time. I want to quit...like you name it.
kevinmchugh 9y ago
My expectation is that they could sell advertisers activation sounds on TV ads. The Facebook app would be programmed to listen for a small handful of sounds (like "hey sir"), but which correspond with eg a car ad. Then the advertisers can track consumer reach throughout the process. No speech recognition necessary, it's just another row in a database, recording an ad display. No evidence that this is what they're doing, though.

dba7dba 9y ago

I removed Facebook from my phone years ago when I learned they were accessing my sms messages. Simple.

madeofpalk 9y ago
I'm so glad my phone doesn't allow apps to do that.

jasonrhaas 9y ago

Regardless of whether or not they are doing it purposely, the capability is certainly there. But the other data they have from cross referencing other web traffic, financial data, etc is probably much more powerful than what they could get from listening in to our conversations. However, I still turn off microphone access for facebook and instagram. It's probably not fool proof, but it can't hurt.

jparse 9y ago

I am not sure if this is real. However, there are people on YouTube talking about topics they have never typed, never cared about, or never shared on Facebook and sure enough, the ad appears. It would be great to really inspect the traffic and see if this is really the case. Independent of what Facebook claims. Either way, I am happy I have deleted it off my phone. I have never been happier each day not reading garbage and actually focusing my time on apps that improve my life and move my life forward.

j_s 9y ago

Linking to the discussion that just jumped off the front page for my own benefit when I get back: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281

Jach 9y ago
http://kuuv.io/i/ACXDGGp.png http://kuuv.io/i/ACXDGGp.png
j_s 9y ago
Rumors That Facebook Is Secretly Recording You Refuse to Die | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15580281 (Oct 2017 18:20, 80+ comments) http://hnrankings.info/15580281/ http://hnrankings.info/15580281/ Facebook denies 'listening' to conversations | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15581114 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15581114 (Oct 2017 20:30, 171+ comments) http://hnrankings.info/15581114 http://hnrankings.info/15581114 Basically the same discussion on separate stories covering the same topic, both on the front page simultaneously. The second only took off after the first was flagged off the page or something. I didn't want to summon the dupe police before I had a chance to review it a bit closer. Also didn't want to lose both to the flagging committee. Mostly planning to review participation by various HN users. #facebook #haterade PS. Neither one is worth an up-vote from me, let alone adding as a favorite!

jparse 9y ago

For anyone interested, the iOS app is composed of about 18,000 classes. Here is the dump: https://gist.githubusercontent.com/quellish/473f513fbd1310233a8e/raw/ddfa17d01435d43ee43751fb6fe17f4d0c8911c6/FBClasses.txt https://gist.githubusercontent.com/quellish/473f513fbd131023...

submeta 9y ago

If they do listen and present you ads based on your conversation, can't you fool it (and test it) by talking about (let's say) buying new running shoes? Shouldn't you observe ads about running shoes? Edit: added missing word

comboy 9y ago
There are some videos of people who did exactly that: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=U0SOxb_Lfps https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=4&v=U0SOxb_Lfps
- submeta 9y ago
  Whoa, pretty creepy indeed
- mikeash 9y ago
  I thought iPhone apps couldn’t silently listen to the microphone.
  - ggreer 9y ago
    That's correct. Apps must request access to the microphone, and iOS shows an indicator while the app is recording. This is pure confirmation bias. If someone tests this and doesn't get a relevant ad from Facebook, they won't upload a video or tell their friends. Note that even in this confirming case, it took two days before the guy saw a cat food ad. We don't know how many other ads he scrolled by before that one.

chillingeffect 9y ago

There have been plenty of stories of malware eavesdropping over smartphone microphones in the last two years. I doubt Facebook does it with their app. It's too much trouble, blatantly illegal and easy to get caught. It's most likely malwAre selling the info to fb, who has no idea how any advertisers get their info.

cyberferret 9y ago

I was totally skeptical when I first heard stories about people's feeds being curated to suit what they were talking about in front of their computers, but then a couple of things made me rethink my views. I was in the car with my friend once (both our phones were in the car with us too), and we were driving and it started raining. His wiper blades were shoddy and doing a bad job of clearing his windscreen. We had a 5 minute discussion on cleaning blades, where was the best place to get a replacement, etc. Neither of us picked up our phones, or did a search on 'wiper blades', nor asked Siri etc. about nearest places to buy. But the next day, for the first time ever, I started seeing ads for wiper blades on my feed. They disappeared after a few days, but it was spooky, as it was for an item that I have never ever discussed, or seen on my feed before, or since. Another anecdote. I was sitting working in my office the other day, when my son came in to talk to me about something. While chatting, he picked up a bass guitar that sits behind my desk and started playing the riff from 'Seinfeld'. I may have said something like "Oh, the Seinfeld theme - you know that was played on a synth and not an actual bass guitar?". Our conversation though, was about something else altogether. A day later, on my feed, I see an ad about "How they played the Seinfeld theme" [0]. A totally specific ad like that, within 24 hours, totally unrelated to any searched I had done in my past. This one too disappeared within a couple of days. [0] - https://twitter.com/dsabar/status/924763005014831104 https://twitter.com/dsabar/status/924763005014831104

IanCal 9y ago
This is called the "Frequency Illusion" (also often called / a similar thing is called the "Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon").
- cyberferret 9y ago
  I would disagree with that phenomenon. In direct contrast, my awareness of these ads kicked into overdrive after seeing them for the first time, so I was hyper aware and looking out for them afterwards, which is why I noticed they disappeared a day or two after popping up. Since then, my feed has been a bland sea of adverts for mattresses, knives etc. that almost all of my friends complain about seeing. I don't use ad blockers, due to my development work in web apps etc. I like my browsers to be as stock as possible, and I do actually at least glance at nearly all ads I see in FB etc. just to see how their targeting is being skewed by my search history or messaging online. These were two quite distinct cases of ads that I've never seen before, which popped up within 24 hours of me talking about (but not doing anything else online related to them) and then disappearing soon after. Sure, an anecdotal sample size of 2 could just be pure coincidence, but something about it still doesn't sit right with me.

em3rgent0rdr 9y ago

I've learned to never believe an entity that says they won't do something without any way to verify such a claim.

dictum 9y ago

On a sufficiently short-lived and well-targeted A/B test, nobody knows you're a listening bug.

elorant 9y ago

Sooner or later we'll have to get in the offensive and break their business model by rendering ads ineffective. It's either that or the Internet we used to know won't exist for much longer. As long as they don't seem to give a fuck about user privacy we don't need to play nice.

unabridged 9y ago

I think people are really underestimating how much they can use your friends search data (especially ones you have been in close proximity to) for your ads. Or how big their interest "niche" is. There are only so many categories of web users, even on the very fringe there are probably 10k who think and search just like you. And when they are searching/clicking on products, Facebook will show you similar things.

bpanon 9y ago
I have a story about this. A girl I was seeing years ago was looking for a new apartment. She texted me telling me she found a new apartment on 20th and Gladstone Ave and asked me if I wanted to go with her to see it. Minutes later, I get a Google Now update saying "It would take you 43 minutes to get to 2020 Gladstone Ave if you leave now". I thought it was cool at first - Google Now was getting really helpful with the driving suggestions. I also thought it was strange that it was for a specific address - I thought that was a glitch, or the nearest address to that intersection, although Google Now has worked with intersections in the past. I thought Google telling me the time it would take to travel to her apartment showing was impressive enough to actually tell this girl what my phone did. She was not amused and thought that I had hacked her phone. She wanted to know how I knew the exact address of the apartment! I was curious how this could have been possible since she never texted me the exact address and found out she did look it up on Google Maps. So it's clear how Google had the data but sharing it with me seemed like a huge breach of privacy. Perhaps the craziest part of all this is that not 5 minutes after telling this girl what Google did, when I went back to take a screenshot of the suggestion - the Google Now card CHANGED to 20th and Gladstone Ave! I was seriously wondering they were analyzing my conversation afterwards expressing my concern of this breach of privacy and had the "privacy invasion" level turned down a degree.

chis 9y ago

Facebook obviously doesn't do this, but I wonder how this will end. Lots of people wanting to regulate Facebook right now, maybe some ineffective laws will get passed.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

eurticket 9y ago

With all the data gathering and listening, how doesn't any organization get the information to stop the attacks that we know about?

twostorytower 9y ago

I don't see definitive proof one way or the other, but I've never given Facebook microphone access on my iPhone. And many others users claiming they've received targeted ads haven't either. But something interesting that is being pointed out on Reddit is that they can use your gyroscope to detect vibration and convert it to soundwaves when your phone is on a flat surface. The PM at Facebook denies listening to the microphone, but what about the gyroscope data? Technically, what he is saying could be a true statement, but still invading privacy just as much.

wozer 9y ago

If we (theoretically) assume that Facebook actually does listen and use the data for advertising: what would be the legal consequences? Could this become the next Volkwagen?

heydonovan 9y ago

What can we do to prevent this? Use another service? Make it more difficult to link information together with use of per-website generated emails, burner phones, etc? Just seems there is room for something to come along and change the game, just not too sure what that thing is.

bpanon 9y ago

A fairly reliable and simple test is this: leave your phone around content for several hours of a different language and see if ads related to that language show up. It's surprising to me that people here are still debating this. I believe it's been going on since the original iPhone came out after a friend told me a very specific product appeared for her on Facebook immediately after she spoke about it and went to go look it up on her phone. I don't think Facebook would stop at any measure to get all the data they can from you if they can get away with it and frankly anyone who does is extremely naive. It's right there available to them. There has never been and may never again be a time when companies (particularly Facebook and Google) to obtain as much sensitive data as is available to them from us without our knowledge, without external oversight, and without repercussions due to the lack of legislation.

beeskneecaps 9y ago

Facebook is definitely creeping on your conversations

kmm 9y ago

A few days ago I ate a chili pepper out of boredom, and after finding out what a bad idea that was, I opened Reddit. The frontpage of /r/todayilearned had a post about someone learning that birds can't detect capsaicin and that peppers evolved it to deter mammals (which have grinding teeth). These kinds of cosmic coincidences happen to me and everyone else every few weeks, and they mean absolutely nothing. We're just wired to see patterns. I (and millions more) see hundreds of Reddit posts per day, you (and millions more) see hundreds of ads per day. A crazy coincidence every 10,000 ads isn't very strange. Something like this should be piss easy to prove, especially on Android. Traffic monitoring, monitoring when exactly the microphone is accessed on a rooted phone, anything really. The fact that this rumor has been going about for years and nobody has found anything, means it's just nonsense.

oculusthrift 9y ago

i don’t get why this is a debate. can’t we just use wire shark or something similar and see if audio data is sent to fb?

croatoan 9y ago

What I'm getting out of "We don't use your microphone for ads" is that they use your microphone, they just don't use it for ads. Which as many comments have already stated makes sense because you don't really need the recordings to determine a suitable ad when they are already getting all the data they need from just using facebook. What I think they do is, they record everything using the microphone, and they store it if you are a person of interest. A person of interest could be that maybe you have a over 1000 friends or something, maybe your a ceo of some tech company, maybe you're a lead programmer at intel, maybe you're someone the US government wants to track, maybe your a senators staff member, maybe you work for the Skunk Works at Lockheed, maybe you said a key word/phrase that throws you into the 'person of interest' category like 'electrogravitic propulsion'. When these surveillance companies do this type of stuff, they do it to people of interest, and if they ever need to put the squeeze on someone, or steal important information like get secret information about a stock trade or something, they go to that person of interests microphone records (which probably get transcribed into text by some program) and search for whatever they want to know. This is why this shit should be utterly banned, it controls people, it steals from people, it destroys innovation and scientific progress before they ever get off the ground, and its just plain manipulative.

vita17 9y ago

According to this post on Reddit, Apple gave Uber access to a private API. He's speculating that Facebook might have access to a private API and is using it to spy on its users. Does anybody have more information about this? https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/dp2gshm/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user...

UncleMeat 9y ago
It would be trivial to decompile the app and see if they were using some hidden or undocumented API. Why has nobody ever been able to find actual evidence in the code?

mistercow 9y ago

One thing the internet does which is super incompatible with how people deal with information is that it amplifies anecdotes and selection bias. If you were just talking to a sample including a small fraction of your friends and acquaintances, and you found that like 10 of them had noticed that Facebook seemed to be showing ads based on their conversations, that would be compelling evidence that something was up. And since for the vast majority of human history, that was the kind of information you had access to, that's the way we tend to process things. But now you can go online and mention this weird thing that happened to you, and a thousand other people will all see it. Suddenly you have super high odds of a "cold hit", even though the phenomenon was purely random. And to make matters worse, it's not purely random. Facebook has algorithms that are trying, often successfully, to model your life based on the information you give it. So the chances of "eery" ad targeting are significantly higher than if it were just random. I think we're going to see this kind of conspiracy theory more and more as time goes on, and we need to figure out cultural tools to counteract this problem.

thinkingemote 9y ago

Many people here may have missed something. From the link in the article, Facebook does listen using your microphone. They say so themselves, they say that you have to give the app permission, and that it's used to listen to say a background music or TV show. they also deny using it to target ads, but they say they do use it for other things. now, I also remember them writing that they only listen when the app is open and a status is being written, but I'm not sure about that statement. Anyhow, the key thing is that Facebook does overtly and publicly use your microphone with its app.

Karunamon 9y ago
We can look at the OS permissions to see what it’s doing in the background. Facebook definitely doesn’t have the ability to listen to the mic in the background on iOS unless you’re implying that Apple created a back door for them...

CharlesDodgson 9y ago

I wonder do FB buy user ad preference data from 3rd parties, that may in turn buy them from another listening app. If I was FB, I'd either process the audio on the device to avoid network traffic, or buy the results from a partner, to keep the actual listening at arms length. It wouldn't be that hard to imagine another ad-tech company collecting the data in some other app and feeding the data back to FB. I can't imagine FB would be asking as many questions from a 3rd party as it would to internal teams.

Shinchy 9y ago

Why don't we just try this out, get a fresh device and block location services then create a new Facebook account. Make sure you don't search for the thing you're aiming to get Ads for (Cat Food, Carpets, Jumper, etc.) on the device itself or nearby devices. Then just talk about those things and see if the ads come up.

a_imho 9y ago

I'm not versed in the facebook tos, but it very well could be included. If that bothers someone they should just stop using facebook, what's so hard about it?

haihaibye 9y ago

To add an anecdote to counteract confirmation bias: I heard this rumor months ago and we started talking about motorbikes with smart phones held up for a few days (20+ mentions). We saw no motorbike ads.

m-p-3 9y ago

No one should trust what they say they can or cannot do. What we can only assume is their capabilities in doing it. This is where end-to-end encryption is important. If you can't encrypt it in a way that only the other end can see it, then assume that someone in the middle can eavesdrop it.

ireallydonot 9y ago

Facebook is liar and privacy violator!!