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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, search

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
- edanm 9y ago
  True, but I have to say that I appreciated both references.
sillysaurus3 9y ago
So... Why should we care? If I had to give my father some reasons why this should concern him, I'd come up blank. Maybe you can fill in a few.
- tfinniga 9y ago
  Is your question why privacy is important, or are you thinking of something else?
  - sillysaurus3 9y ago
    They have to respect our privacy. The moment they don't, it will cause widespread outrage. Once I realized that, it was hard to think of reasons why their actions are wrong.
    - datawarrior 9y ago
      Having a hard time figuring out if you're serious but if you are then take a look here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/#75bea33f197c https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... That's only one instance of why you should care. There are plenty of others.
    - jacobush 9y ago
      I ... don’t know what to say. What they are doing now is respectful? If we ever come to widespread outrage, it will be much to late. In fact, I don’t think there can be outrage. FB would detect it and make it disappear. Somehow.
    - mikeash 9y ago
      Remember when Target snitched to a teenager’s parents that she was pregnant because her purchases fit the “is pregnant” profile, and everyone got outraged, and they stopped profiling people? Actually, only the first two things happened.
      - 9y ago
photonios 9y ago
Exactly. People underestimate the amount of data Facebook (and companies alike) can and do scoop up. I’ve seen countless stories supposedly proofing that they’re listening through the microphone. However, most of them can easily be explained away if you consider the vasts amount of data they collect.
- Cacti 9y ago
  The idea that they're listening to your mic is rather ridiculous. I mean, we'd find out eventually, and the consequences of widespread illegal wiretapping would be severe for Facebook, they would really cease to exist. However, as you said, they don't need to. Localization and usage metrics alone can tell you an incredible amount of extremely detailed information.
  - imron 9y ago
    > the consequences of widespread illegal wiretapping would be severe for Facebook, they would really cease to exist. Unfortunately, I don't think they would. They'd get a slap on the wrist fine, maybe have one or two senior executives resign, they'd post a mea culpa, saying how they now it was wrong and promise to do better, and then everyone would forget about it a few weeks later when some new thing started to dominate the news cycle.
    - photonios 9y ago
      Indeed. I doubt they would go down due to this. They'd receive some negative attention. They'll make some sweet PR statements and hop, they're back in business.
  - agildehaus 9y ago
    Just looking at the Facebook iOS app, they don't declare the "audio" background mode in their Info.plist. So instantly we know that they're not recording anything in the background. For foreground, I suppose it'd be fairly trivial to tell if the app was making calls to AVAudioRecorder.
  - 9y ago
tfinniga 9y ago
Right, like the example from Target. It is possible that facebook has access to a stream of Target purchases or credit card purchase information. I'd be 0% surprised if there was a data sharing agreement with credit rating companies. Even if they just knew the price of the purchase, combined with the job (burn risk) and location data (traveled from work to nearest store with pharmacy during the day), it's possible that you might be able to infer a burn with enough accuracy to be valuable to advertisers.
- m_ke 9y ago
  https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-partners-with-datalogix-to-track-offline-retail-purchases/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-partners... https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-partners/oracle-data-cloud/ https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-partners/ora... http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-epsilon-match-store-purchases-user-profiles/239967/ http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-eps...
- branchless 9y ago
  My suspicion on this is that stores offer "reward cards" so they can get you to sign something that allows them to gather and sell your data.
  - TAForObvReasons 9y ago
    Rewards cards / loyalty card are designed to incentivize you to spend more with the stores. Ostensibly reselling data is a lot less valuable than directly trying to convince you to shop more at their establishments
    - reaperducer 9y ago
      That was true at the beginning of the loyalty card phage. But now the big chains are learning how to data mine and discovering the value of their data to others. Now your loyalty card data is worth twice as much. Once to the retailer for internal marketing, targeting, purchasing, etc... and again selling it to outside parties.
maltalex 9y ago
> a sufficiently advanced amount of data and analysis will be indistinguishable from surveillance. What’s surveillance if not “sufficently advanced amount of data”? They’re indistinguishable becaus they are the same. Facebook isn’t “collecting data”. It really is following you.
Draco_Au 9y ago
You cannot predict human behavior, but on a long enough time frame...You could get global results. Everything is local at the moment. You would need Quantum computers to foretell ‘favorite selection’ at that scale - A parallel MapReduce - or other atomically non-blocking aspect of Fuzzy Stream Processing.
Cacti 9y ago
Yes, I think people really underestimate how much data they leak all day long, and how strong the pattern is. Simply emitting bluetooth and wifi, nevermind cellular, all day long can expose an incredible amount of stuff, provided someone can piece it all together (which is exactly what Facebook and other ad companies do). We like to pretend we're unique and powered by free-will but the reality is most things you do are fairly easy to track and predict. We're not in 1984, but certainly the capability is _already_ there. The difference between us and 1984 is only really one of intent, and you can guess how long that'll last.
- paloaltokid 9y ago
  We _are_ in 1984, but unlike the book, it's not imposed on us. We signed up for it. And those of frequenting HN most likely are the ones helping to build it. Think about it: tomorrow is Monday. How many folks on this board will be working on analytics and tracking once they get in to the office? A lot of us, guaranteed. And how many of us will take a principled stand, swearing not to work on products until surveillance features are removed? A few of us, guaranteed.
  - Cacti 9y ago
    You say people will take a stand, but the vast and overwhelming number of us wont, we will just continue to help build the greatest surveillance system in history. And then tell each other how we’re unicorns that are saving the world, that we cherish freedom and liberty and the hacker ethis, when really we just want to get paid.
    - jeffdavis 9y ago
      Nobody knows what stand to take. We stood and fought for open source everywhere, thinking that would be our salvation. But apperently there is more to it than that, and we aren't exactly sure what.
      - Cacti 9y ago
        Sure we are sure, we just don't like it. RMS gets a lot of flack, but he's mostly right---this is not a technical problem with a technical solution, it's a political problem with a necessarily political solution. Most of us live in democracies, so if you want to fix the problem, it's actually quite straight-forward, it's just that people don't want to give up their nice job and nice hobbies.
cvwright 9y ago
You make a very good point. However, in this case there is very strong evidence that Facebook is also listening to the microphone. Coincidentally, I recently had a friend convey a story where the Facebook app suddenly recommended a new connection immediately after certain information was spoken in a verbal conversation. This instance was particularly damning because, due to the sensitivity of the information that was spoken, it had been very carefully kept out of the digital footprint.
- Vinnl 9y ago
  I consider it likely that this is merely just another example of people underestimating how much data they're leaking. I would wager to guess that there would have been far easier methods of deducing that new connection other than listening to your conversation and somehow inferring it from that stream of noise. You just don't know which, but it's not unimaginable that that certain information was leaked in another way as well, and probably in a more structured format than unlabelled audio.
  - netsharc 9y ago
    Maybe the other party looked the friend up. Once Facebook recommended me to connect to guy with an interesting name, and I wondered where I saw this name before. I looked up my emails, and I saw that I bought something from him on eBay several years earlier. I know I never gave Facebook access to my mail account, but guess what, I'm pretty sure the guy gave access to his. Facebook saw that we sent mail to each other, and it asked me if I wanted to be FB friends with this random eBayer...
  - rando444 9y ago
    It's not unimaginable, but the frequency of these stories should make you wonder. I had this happen personally. Had a conversation about my work with this girl I know which ended up being mostly about project management. The girl told me later she started getting ads for project management stuff. It's not a subject she's interested in, has ever searched for information on, and has no relevance to her job working the counter at a sandwich shop. We have no social media accounts in common and don't even talk that often.
patientplatypus 9y ago
Ummm....https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user... It's a pretty easy test - they just said "cat food" a bunch of times and ads for cat food came up in their feed the next day. I'm sure if you were interested you could probably do the same experiment with some other product you've never posted about or talked about online and come up with similar results. It seems strange that you would just assume that the people who are bringing up this issue are simply misinformed, or do not also know that facebook also looks at other parts of their data. I think most lay people understand how data mining is leveraged these days.
- batiudrami 9y ago
  This is easy also to fake, and I trust some random YouTuber much less than a public Facebook statement. It would be intensely stupid for the head of ads at to deny this if they were doing it.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Well, she wasn't under oath, so there is no firm legal requirement for her to be truthful. Or maybe, being a public representative, she's not been briefed about this. Legal security through compartmentalization is pretty common in the corporate world.
    - jhasse 9y ago
      > Well, she wasn't under oath, so there is no firm legal requirement for her to be truthful. The same is true for the random YouTuber ;)
      - mirimir 9y ago
        For sure :)
- bearbearbear 9y ago
  Hi, first comment so please be gentle. I'd like to point out that this video doesn't actually provide any evidence that Facebook was listening. They said they talked about cat food all day, then they showed an ad on Facebook for cat food. There's no way to verify that they didn't make the video of the cat food ad on Facebook and then talk about cat food all day. Nor is there any evidence that they talked about cat food all day at all. No recording of the conversations etc. In fact I'm a little confused about how this is even a question. I'm not a programmer so I don't know, but: Wouldn't it be trivial for someone who knows how to write Android software to monitor if an an application is accessing the audio input device? I mean, I know that on Linux you can monitor whether or not a device is being opened. Why doesn't someone check if Facebook is accessing the audio input?
username223 9y ago
> Facebook is listening to your data--to all of our data, all at once. So is Google. What makes FB even creepier is that they don't just watch everything people do, but they manipulate people in controlled experiments to extract as much money from them as possible.
- yazaddaruvala 9y ago
  > they manipulate people in controlled experiments to extract as much money from them as possible. You just described A/B testing. This is a technique used by every successful company. The only thing unique about Facebook is the data.
  - gnulinux 9y ago
    FB is also okay using data other companies choose not to. Ethics is definitely a factor, too.
    - luxpir 9y ago
      This is the thing. It's a fine line between offering someone a solution they might want or appreciate based on their search. Another to manipulate them into wanting it through emotional plays.
gxs 9y ago
What an insightful comment. Not sure if that’s your idea or not but the bit about enough data being indistinguishable from surveillance is very interesting and if evolved properly may one day make a great argument for constitutional protections around data collection and privacy.
bonestamp2 9y ago
> and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country Definitely. Basically every major website has facebook code on it for social sharing and for "analytics". Facebook surely uses this analytics data to track you from site to site and know exactly what you're looking at. If your browser is signed into facebook, they know exactly who you are too.

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

edanm 9y ago
True, but I have to say that I appreciated both references.

sillysaurus3 9y ago

So... Why should we care? If I had to give my father some reasons why this should concern him, I'd come up blank. Maybe you can fill in a few.

tfinniga 9y ago
Is your question why privacy is important, or are you thinking of something else?
- sillysaurus3 9y ago
  They have to respect our privacy. The moment they don't, it will cause widespread outrage. Once I realized that, it was hard to think of reasons why their actions are wrong.
  - datawarrior 9y ago
    Having a hard time figuring out if you're serious but if you are then take a look here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook-manipulated-689003-users-emotions-for-science/#75bea33f197c https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/06/28/facebook... That's only one instance of why you should care. There are plenty of others.
  - jacobush 9y ago
    I ... don’t know what to say. What they are doing now is respectful? If we ever come to widespread outrage, it will be much to late. In fact, I don’t think there can be outrage. FB would detect it and make it disappear. Somehow.
  - mikeash 9y ago
    Remember when Target snitched to a teenager’s parents that she was pregnant because her purchases fit the “is pregnant” profile, and everyone got outraged, and they stopped profiling people? Actually, only the first two things happened.
    - 9y ago

photonios 9y ago

Exactly. People underestimate the amount of data Facebook (and companies alike) can and do scoop up. I’ve seen countless stories supposedly proofing that they’re listening through the microphone. However, most of them can easily be explained away if you consider the vasts amount of data they collect.

Cacti 9y ago
The idea that they're listening to your mic is rather ridiculous. I mean, we'd find out eventually, and the consequences of widespread illegal wiretapping would be severe for Facebook, they would really cease to exist. However, as you said, they don't need to. Localization and usage metrics alone can tell you an incredible amount of extremely detailed information.
- imron 9y ago
  > the consequences of widespread illegal wiretapping would be severe for Facebook, they would really cease to exist. Unfortunately, I don't think they would. They'd get a slap on the wrist fine, maybe have one or two senior executives resign, they'd post a mea culpa, saying how they now it was wrong and promise to do better, and then everyone would forget about it a few weeks later when some new thing started to dominate the news cycle.
  - photonios 9y ago
    Indeed. I doubt they would go down due to this. They'd receive some negative attention. They'll make some sweet PR statements and hop, they're back in business.
- agildehaus 9y ago
  Just looking at the Facebook iOS app, they don't declare the "audio" background mode in their Info.plist. So instantly we know that they're not recording anything in the background. For foreground, I suppose it'd be fairly trivial to tell if the app was making calls to AVAudioRecorder.
- 9y ago

tfinniga 9y ago

Right, like the example from Target. It is possible that facebook has access to a stream of Target purchases or credit card purchase information. I'd be 0% surprised if there was a data sharing agreement with credit rating companies. Even if they just knew the price of the purchase, combined with the job (burn risk) and location data (traveled from work to nearest store with pharmacy during the day), it's possible that you might be able to infer a burn with enough accuracy to be valuable to advertisers.

m_ke 9y ago
https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-partners-with-datalogix-to-track-offline-retail-purchases/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-partners... https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-partners/oracle-data-cloud/ https://facebookmarketingpartners.com/marketing-partners/ora... http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-epsilon-match-store-purchases-user-profiles/239967/ http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-partner-acxiom-eps...
branchless 9y ago
My suspicion on this is that stores offer "reward cards" so they can get you to sign something that allows them to gather and sell your data.
- TAForObvReasons 9y ago
  Rewards cards / loyalty card are designed to incentivize you to spend more with the stores. Ostensibly reselling data is a lot less valuable than directly trying to convince you to shop more at their establishments
  - reaperducer 9y ago
    That was true at the beginning of the loyalty card phage. But now the big chains are learning how to data mine and discovering the value of their data to others. Now your loyalty card data is worth twice as much. Once to the retailer for internal marketing, targeting, purchasing, etc... and again selling it to outside parties.

maltalex 9y ago

> a sufficiently advanced amount of data and analysis will be indistinguishable from surveillance. What’s surveillance if not “sufficently advanced amount of data”? They’re indistinguishable becaus they are the same. Facebook isn’t “collecting data”. It really is following you.

Draco_Au 9y ago

You cannot predict human behavior, but on a long enough time frame...You could get global results. Everything is local at the moment. You would need Quantum computers to foretell ‘favorite selection’ at that scale - A parallel MapReduce - or other atomically non-blocking aspect of Fuzzy Stream Processing.

Cacti 9y ago

Yes, I think people really underestimate how much data they leak all day long, and how strong the pattern is. Simply emitting bluetooth and wifi, nevermind cellular, all day long can expose an incredible amount of stuff, provided someone can piece it all together (which is exactly what Facebook and other ad companies do). We like to pretend we're unique and powered by free-will but the reality is most things you do are fairly easy to track and predict. We're not in 1984, but certainly the capability is _already_ there. The difference between us and 1984 is only really one of intent, and you can guess how long that'll last.

paloaltokid 9y ago
We _are_ in 1984, but unlike the book, it's not imposed on us. We signed up for it. And those of frequenting HN most likely are the ones helping to build it. Think about it: tomorrow is Monday. How many folks on this board will be working on analytics and tracking once they get in to the office? A lot of us, guaranteed. And how many of us will take a principled stand, swearing not to work on products until surveillance features are removed? A few of us, guaranteed.
- Cacti 9y ago
  You say people will take a stand, but the vast and overwhelming number of us wont, we will just continue to help build the greatest surveillance system in history. And then tell each other how we’re unicorns that are saving the world, that we cherish freedom and liberty and the hacker ethis, when really we just want to get paid.
  - jeffdavis 9y ago
    Nobody knows what stand to take. We stood and fought for open source everywhere, thinking that would be our salvation. But apperently there is more to it than that, and we aren't exactly sure what.
    - Cacti 9y ago
      Sure we are sure, we just don't like it. RMS gets a lot of flack, but he's mostly right---this is not a technical problem with a technical solution, it's a political problem with a necessarily political solution. Most of us live in democracies, so if you want to fix the problem, it's actually quite straight-forward, it's just that people don't want to give up their nice job and nice hobbies.

cvwright 9y ago

You make a very good point. However, in this case there is very strong evidence that Facebook is also listening to the microphone. Coincidentally, I recently had a friend convey a story where the Facebook app suddenly recommended a new connection immediately after certain information was spoken in a verbal conversation. This instance was particularly damning because, due to the sensitivity of the information that was spoken, it had been very carefully kept out of the digital footprint.

Vinnl 9y ago
I consider it likely that this is merely just another example of people underestimating how much data they're leaking. I would wager to guess that there would have been far easier methods of deducing that new connection other than listening to your conversation and somehow inferring it from that stream of noise. You just don't know which, but it's not unimaginable that that certain information was leaked in another way as well, and probably in a more structured format than unlabelled audio.
- netsharc 9y ago
  Maybe the other party looked the friend up. Once Facebook recommended me to connect to guy with an interesting name, and I wondered where I saw this name before. I looked up my emails, and I saw that I bought something from him on eBay several years earlier. I know I never gave Facebook access to my mail account, but guess what, I'm pretty sure the guy gave access to his. Facebook saw that we sent mail to each other, and it asked me if I wanted to be FB friends with this random eBayer...
- rando444 9y ago
  It's not unimaginable, but the frequency of these stories should make you wonder. I had this happen personally. Had a conversation about my work with this girl I know which ended up being mostly about project management. The girl told me later she started getting ads for project management stuff. It's not a subject she's interested in, has ever searched for information on, and has no relevance to her job working the counter at a sandwich shop. We have no social media accounts in common and don't even talk that often.

patientplatypus 9y ago

Ummm....https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user_demonstrating_how_facebook_listens/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/79i4cj/youtube_user... It's a pretty easy test - they just said "cat food" a bunch of times and ads for cat food came up in their feed the next day. I'm sure if you were interested you could probably do the same experiment with some other product you've never posted about or talked about online and come up with similar results. It seems strange that you would just assume that the people who are bringing up this issue are simply misinformed, or do not also know that facebook also looks at other parts of their data. I think most lay people understand how data mining is leveraged these days.

batiudrami 9y ago
This is easy also to fake, and I trust some random YouTuber much less than a public Facebook statement. It would be intensely stupid for the head of ads at to deny this if they were doing it.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Well, she wasn't under oath, so there is no firm legal requirement for her to be truthful. Or maybe, being a public representative, she's not been briefed about this. Legal security through compartmentalization is pretty common in the corporate world.
  - jhasse 9y ago
    > Well, she wasn't under oath, so there is no firm legal requirement for her to be truthful. The same is true for the random YouTuber ;)
    - mirimir 9y ago
      For sure :)
bearbearbear 9y ago
Hi, first comment so please be gentle. I'd like to point out that this video doesn't actually provide any evidence that Facebook was listening. They said they talked about cat food all day, then they showed an ad on Facebook for cat food. There's no way to verify that they didn't make the video of the cat food ad on Facebook and then talk about cat food all day. Nor is there any evidence that they talked about cat food all day at all. No recording of the conversations etc. In fact I'm a little confused about how this is even a question. I'm not a programmer so I don't know, but: Wouldn't it be trivial for someone who knows how to write Android software to monitor if an an application is accessing the audio input device? I mean, I know that on Linux you can monitor whether or not a device is being opened. Why doesn't someone check if Facebook is accessing the audio input?

username223 9y ago

> Facebook is listening to your data--to all of our data, all at once. So is Google. What makes FB even creepier is that they don't just watch everything people do, but they manipulate people in controlled experiments to extract as much money from them as possible.

yazaddaruvala 9y ago
> they manipulate people in controlled experiments to extract as much money from them as possible. You just described A/B testing. This is a technique used by every successful company. The only thing unique about Facebook is the data.
- gnulinux 9y ago
  FB is also okay using data other companies choose not to. Ethics is definitely a factor, too.
  - luxpir 9y ago
    This is the thing. It's a fine line between offering someone a solution they might want or appreciate based on their search. Another to manipulate them into wanting it through emotional plays.

gxs 9y ago

What an insightful comment. Not sure if that’s your idea or not but the bit about enough data being indistinguishable from surveillance is very interesting and if evolved properly may one day make a great argument for constitutional protections around data collection and privacy.

bonestamp2 9y ago

> and any other form of browsing patterns for everyone in your country Definitely. Basically every major website has facebook code on it for social sharing and for "analytics". Facebook surely uses this analytics data to track you from site to site and know exactly what you're looking at. If your browser is signed into facebook, they know exactly who you are too.