28 ms·

Facebook Really Is Spying on You, Just Not Through Your Phone's Mic

• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• scottlegrand2 9y ago
  So I was trying to remember the buff old guy from Avatar, Stephen Lang. Once I found him, I noticed that I am suddenly being recommended videos on YouTube that include him. Okeydokey, machine-learning, moving on.
• ArchReaper 9y ago
  Anyone got a non-paywall link? Is there a reason for me to not flag paywalled submissions?
  • deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  • jstalin 9y ago
    https://archive.fo/iCnWG https://archive.fo/iCnWG
  • grzm 9y ago
    > ”Is there a reason for me to not flag paywalled submissions?” The FAQ is clear on the mods' stance on paywalled articles: (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html) > "Are paywalls ok?" > "It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds." > "In comments, it's ok to ask how to read an article and to help other users do so. But please don't post complaints about paywalls. Those are off topic."
  • max-m 9y ago
    > It's ok to post stories from sites with paywalls that have workarounds. I got around the wall by getting there from the Google search results.
  • tchen 9y ago
    https://outline.com/L4wwUN https://outline.com/L4wwUN
  • hectormalot 9y ago
    It's usually easy to click the 'web' link on the top of the discussions page and follow the first result on google. I believe there have been many discussion on the utility of paywalled articles and I believe the discussion has mostly settled on allowing it as long as it is easy to circumvent. OT: actually interesting to see how the author worked backwards to understand why he is receiving adds. Still: all this, and still they keep showing adds for stuff I recently bought...
    • shaki-dora 9y ago
      Showing ads for stuff you recently bought happens to be extremely valuable advertising. Sometimes the first order doesn’t arrive, or you want another one for the office... You think the chances of that are low, but they are still far better than showing you a generic ad.
    • s73v3r_ 9y ago
      Rarely would the author of an article have any kind of control over the advertising shown on the page.
  • bad_user 9y ago
    Display ads, get ad-blockers. Demand cash in exchange for delivering articles, get complaints. Publishers really can't win, can they? Quick tip: search for the article's name on Google and click on the link from the results.
    • Karunamon 9y ago
      They could start by not demanding a full subscription and a user login for a single article. Also, the Google trick won't work if you bounced off the paywall already, you have to open a private tab or clear cookies.
  • s73v3r_ 9y ago
    "Is there a reason for me to not flag paywalled submissions?" People worked hard on the article. Should they not get paid for their work? Do you feel you shouldn't be paid for your work?
• slededit 9y ago
  The claim of the article is that it would be technically infeasible - and they go into how difficult it is to interpret context. However simple keyword matching would be more than enough. Facebook has a lot of compute resources, but they wouldn't have to use it. Your smartphone is more than fast enough to do simple speech recognition. The accuracy rate wouldn't have to be that high - you won't get mad if you see an ad for a misheard keyword.
  • monocasa 9y ago
    Wouldn't that destroy your battery life?
    • Crespyl 9y ago
      I don't necessarily believe that FB was literally listening to the phone mic, but it is the case that the FaceBook app was a notorious battery hog.
    • slededit 9y ago
      Radioshack sold a voice recognition chip in the 80s[1] that was a simple 8-bit microcontroller. If you are willing to slip on the accuracy and false positives you can do recognition with very little computation. [1] http://21stdigitalhome.blogspot.ca/2013/06/vcp200-voice-recognition-ic.html http://21stdigitalhome.blogspot.ca/2013/06/vcp200-voice-reco...
      • skjerns 9y ago
        "80s" - "voice recognition" - "accuracy" - which doesnt fit?
        • gcb0 9y ago
          your wrong preconceptions don't fit :) the downside was power usage. Motorola made one that was power efficient, used by nokia in the 90s and its pretty much the same chip in google's phone line today (just even more power efficient). division is under lenovo now
• imhoguy 9y ago
  The last thing to install on ones phone is FB app - technically one gives up all privacy. If you need to use FB then stick to browser and clear browser data afterwards.
  • justinhj 9y ago
    I also have Wechat :)
  • harryf 9y ago
    It's potentially not just the app. The Facebook SDK is embedded in probably 50%+ of _all_ the apps we use e.g. In top 10 most popular cocoapods - https://libraries.io/search?order=desc&platforms=CocoaPods&sort=rank https://libraries.io/search?order=desc&platforms=CocoaPods&s... - the FBSDKCoreKit - https://libraries.io/cocoapods/FBSDKCoreKit https://libraries.io/cocoapods/FBSDKCoreKit
    • tzahola 9y ago
      But that’s open source and can be audited.
      • harryf 9y ago
        Yes but there's a gap between "can be audited" and "is being audited". If they got caught doing anything malign they can just pull the "oooops we didn't mean to" defence as they've done before[1] - their track record here says "if we can find a way, we're at least going to experiment with it" Also consider this in the light of recent EU rulings on Facebooks tracking of non-users via the Like button on websites being an illegal violation of privacy[2]. As usual the law lags the technology by many years - was the EU even aware of the Facebook mobile SDK being wisely installed in many 3rd party apps when they made this ruling? (edit: reading the report from the University of Leuven it seems they were at least aware of the implications of things like Facebooks Mobile Advertiser network) [1] https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-a-bug-that-caused-silent-audio-to-vampire-your-iphone-battery/amp/ https://www.google.ch/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebo... [2] https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2015/mar/31/facebook-tracks-all-visitors-breaching-eu-law-report https://www.google.ch/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/technology/2...
• excalibur 9y ago
  > Data brokers run personal information through an algorithm before uploading so it’s not identifiable, Facebook says, but it still can be matched with Facebook account information. You keep using that word...
  • MentallyRetired 9y ago
    Well, if you had known what you were looking for you would have seen it written on my dorm room window.
• Karunamon 9y ago
  Similar Guardian article with no paywall: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-spying-on-you-microphone-creepy-data-conspiracy-theories https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/nov/09/facebook-... That said, this is a quite silly conspiracy theory. Believing the "recording" theory requires you to believe that Apple and Google both are in cahoots with Facebook to give them a rootkit-like API for mic and location access that override all of the OS-level controls and warnings about when that hardware is in use, and hide it from the data and battery usage stats on the phone. This API, when (not if) found, would be a watershed moment for privacy legislation directed at all three companies. Little to gain, potentially the whole farm to lose.
  • vinchuco 9y ago
    >this is a quite silly conspiracy theory. Seems like you put conspiracy theories in two boxes. So what's on the other box?
    • Karunamon 9y ago
      Theories with evidence to support them.
      • vinchuco 9y ago
        Reasonable box label. I meant what's inside.
        • Karunamon 9y ago
          As an example, the degree to which government agencies are involved with snarfing up private communications from Americans with almost no real oversight. Mostly out of the bogus box when Carnivore came to light, completely out when Snowden did his leaks.
  • CaptSpify 9y ago
    > requires you to believe that Apple and Google both are in cahoots with Facebook to give them a rootkit-like API for mic and location access that override all of the OS-level controls and warnings about when that hardware is in use, and hide it from the data and battery usage stats on the phone. You mean like when they gave Uber special access to grab screenshots even when the Uber app wasn't running? Yeah, totally impossible to believe.
• minimaxir 9y ago
  It's worth nothing that the reason security researchers haven't just intercepted the traffic from the Facebook apps to see if its transmitting voice data is because the apps use Certificate Pinning, which prevents the SSL traffic from being decrypted using the SSL certificate generated by mitmproxy/Charles. In light of that restriction, what might be interesting is looking at the amount of data transferred by the Facebook app with/without the microphone/location services enabled. (this is a data project I have in the pipeline)
  • jimrandomh 9y ago
    Note that while certificate pinning does make reverse-engineering harder, it's also a legitimate security feature; without it, anyone who controlled a CA (including most major governments) would be able to forge a certificate and use it to spy on users. Certificate pinning is a hurdle to reverse engineering, but a surmountable one, at least on Android. Since the app is running on a phone where you may potentially have root, you can pick it apart with a debugger and see the traffic before it leaves the phone. This is technically challenging, but it is something that people do sometimes.
    • bby 9y ago
      CA?
    • Drdrdrq 9y ago
      Or you can find and replace CA file/string with your own and then do mitm. There is virtually no way app developers can defend against such hacks on any platform owned by user (so, everywhere except on Apple devices).
      • jimmies 9y ago
        Would something like this work as a method to authenticate authentic clients? http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9908/20/aolbug.idg/index.html http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9908/20/aolbug.idg/index.h...
• bitwize 9y ago
  This is why I like Caffè Nero's loyalty cards. They are little pieces of cardstock with nine coffee cups printed on them. You get a stamp every time you order. Once all nine cups are stamped, redeem the card for a free coffee. There's no PII on the card and your name isn't going through an additional computer (on top of the standard 17 a day, per Cereal Killer). More places should do this.
  • tomcooks 9y ago
    This is the kebab shop business model in Europe, is it really that rare to find simple loyalty cards with stamps where you live (assuming USA)?
    • bitwize 9y ago
      This is the USA we're talking about, where if an unethical way to wring out more dollars doesn't have a law explicitly forbidding it (and there are laughably few such laws here), it WILL be used against you. I know of a few places that have simple stamp loyalty cards. Oftentimes they are mom and pop shops, or chains still finding their footing. Most cards are electronic and want a name and phone number associated with them.
      • marnett 9y ago
        App loyalty cards, while still having some information on you, are largely about large merchants (ie starbucks) avoiding credit card interchange fees by giving rewards for people who load money to the app and purchase from there. So, all incentives are not against consumers. The merchants avoid the credit card oligopoly fee and pass on the rewards to consumers.
        • EADGBE 9y ago
          Avoiding a credit card processing fee could be done the same with with a punch card.
          • 9y ago
• newnewpdro 9y ago
  Am I alone in being horrified by the reality that many people today consume most if not all of their news and entertainment holding a camera and microphone on proprietary communication systems running software controlled by the same entities producing the content? How is this not the greatest threat to democracy in the entire history of democracy?
  • threeseed 9y ago
    Yes you're probably alone amongst other conspiracy theorists. Firstly, at least on iPhone users know when camera/microphone is being engaged. Secondly, the entities you talk about don't produce the content. Users do. Thirdly, it is completely and utterly stupid for them to cross the line when it comes to privacy. Which is why they largely don't.
    • CaptSpify 9y ago
      > Firstly, at least on iPhone users know when camera/microphone is being engaged. How can you know that on a closed system? There's no hardware indicator. > Thirdly, it is completely and utterly stupid for them to cross the line when it comes to privacy. Yeah, I'm super glad nobody else has done that because it would be sooooo stupid to do /sarcasm
      • threeseed 9y ago
        So it started with being Facebook is secretly recording you. Now it is Apple has secretly embedded a backdoor in the hardware and OS of the phones. Specifically so Facebook can use it to secretly record you. A conspiracy of thousands of people ? No that doesn't sound crazy at all.
        • Synaesthesia 9y ago
          The point is we don’t know what goes on inside our computers, they’re proprietary, they’re closed and we’ve had some pretty shocking revelations already. It’s absolutely not outside the realm of possibility.
• remusrm 9y ago
  yet everyone does not care... 1984 is here
• jackjeff 9y ago
  I find it amazing that people even notice. I don’t have an ad blocker on all my browsers, and except for YouTube and interstitial ads that Chrome will soon block, most ads are simply not registered by my brain.
  • zxcb1 9y ago
    Are you sure? Everyone says that they are “immune” to advertising (or propaganda), and yet here we are where the collective result shows that it works, surprisingly well too. Another theory could be that people just get the causal order wrong: ad display => subconscious influence, nudge => eventual product purchase, mention etc => recognized ad => spooky feeling
    • jackjeff 9y ago
      Yes. I know it works. Why would these companies spend so much money if it was not. And in addition they have good metrics to know which campaigns work. But this flies in the face of my personal experience... Aside from YouTube, I can’t remember when was the last time I saw and ad and what it was. Must have been weeks ago.
  • Shikadi 9y ago
    I find it amazing that so many people find it amazing that other people are different.
• username223 9y ago
  > I keyed in my phone number so I could get loyalty points. Do this: lie. 234-567-8901 works at a lot of US stores. Sometimes you can even use it for gas discounts.
  • EADGBE 9y ago
    I prefer 867-5309.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• titzer 9y ago
  Hey Facebook, if you got nothing to hide, show us the code. We showed you our friends, our relationships, our interests, our intimate and disarmed states, our rants, and probably half of the websites we visited. (in retrospect, that was dumb) Oh, your tin can and strings might show? Competitors might get ideas? Please. Until then, not a fan of you, not clicking on your ads, and generally avoiding your site. In fact I think I'll start deconstructing my profile as soon as I can muster the courage to choke back my gag reflex. Sincerely, A growing group of mugged social network burnouts.
  • bubblethink 9y ago
    Which code ? Server side code is unreasonable to expect. For client code, you can just use the browser. It may not be as convenient or full featured as the app, but it'll do the job if you absolutely must use FB. The situation is much better with stuff like FB which is not that essential. It's more problematic with Google Maps, where you can't get turn by turn navigation unless you use the app.
    • kibwen 9y ago
      > Server side code is unreasonable to expect. Honest question: why would it be unreasonable for us to expect server-side code to be open-source? Facebook's value lies in its brand and its infrastructure, not in its code, so there's no risk of upstarts taking Facebook's code and standing up a clone (which, even with the code, is way easier said than done).
      • pcthrowaway 9y ago
        Because it would highlight all the things they do which users would find unsavory. Rather than e.g. just speculating about what facebook does with our mic, we'd be able to point to where they do it in the code.
      • Karunamon 9y ago
        Because you have no way of knowing that the server side code you're looking at is the server side code running.
• hmhrex 9y ago
  Reply All did an episode on this that was really good: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying#ep... The thing I thought was interesting is just how adamant people are about FB spying via mic. They also had an update in their year-end episode: https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/113-reply-alls-year-end-extravaganza#episode-player https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/113-reply-alls-year-en... Both worth a listen.
  • smt88 9y ago
    Something to note as you listen is that people convinced they're being spied on are mostly amused by it. They don't sound outraged or frightened at all.
    • BlueGh0st 9y ago
      I believe that's the sentiment of most users, unnervingly.
    • hmhrex 9y ago
      Which is a little surreal. I think I get the same way though. It really freaks me out, but there's not much I can do about it, so I'll laugh it off. I don't use social media (although I'm still on Reddit), and I still feel this way.
      • smt88 9y ago
        You can do one more thing that may be extreme, depending on where you live now. You can move to a country covered by GDPR. If you're in the US, you can also be a privacy activist, which we need more of.
  • falcolas 9y ago
    > just how adamant people are about FB spying via mic I'm of the opinion that it's easier for your average Jane/Joe to believe (and maybe even preferable to believe) that someone is listening and responding to your words than a computer piecing together a picture of you from unrelated clues via some nebulous "machine learning algorithm". Anybody can listen to your words and advertise to you based on them. It is, on the other hand, not feasible for a human to look at a stream of unrelated posts and figure out that you're pregnant.
• cryptonector 9y ago
  Step 1: don't use Android. Step 2: don't use smartphones at all. Step 3: black-hole FB and others at your router at home. I personally skip step 2 because I'm addicted to being able to quickly search for things, read blogs. But even so: a) don't login to any websites, b) clear website data often, c) minimize use of apps, d) recall that when you browse the web from an app you're using the same cookie jar and other state as the main browser, and that you're letting the app track you.
  • paulie_a 9y ago
    I think this is the exact opposite approach to take, it is a cat and mouse game to avoid being tracked, and you will always be the mouse. If anything, go out of your way to ruin the creepy tracking, analytics and bullshit metrics. Add as much noise as possible to their databases.
• MentallyRetired 9y ago
  Drove by a scion iM in a parking lot one time.. and I said out loud "Scion iM? What the heck is that?" -- ads on IG and FB for Scion iM when I got home 20 minutes later. No search, no associative info, no dealer info... I simply said it. I've had quite a few of those, and usually I can trace it back to me googling something, etc. But this time, nada.
  • Johnny555 9y ago
    I'd blame this on confirmation bias - there must be dozens if not hundreds of times you use or mention a product every day that you don't notice ads for, but the rare time you do, it reinforces the belief that they are reacting to what you said.
    • tudelo 9y ago
      Well you surely can't deny that SOMEONE is listening? Google or Facebook, do some tests and you will find it's true. Confirmation bias is a possibility but from what I have seen and experienced I just can't believe that is always the case.
    • mywittyname 9y ago
      I don't have a FB account, but my wife's account absolutely delivers her ads intended for me. I've not been able to isolate exactly how it is doing it, but the dragnet is absolutely wide enough to capture a household. She's received ads for Civic Type R (she hates cars), Senior Java Developer (she works in a totally unrelated field), cooking tools (I do all the cooking), and tons of other things. It creeps me out.
      • so33 9y ago
        I’m guessing you and your wife share a home and an IP address, and Facebook is using that to associate “your” ads with your wife’s FB account. Edit: How Facebook would get your browsing data, even if you’ve disabled things like ads and those FB like buttons (like I assume most HN posters would), is beyond my wild speculation.
• chimmy_chonga 9y ago
  Ghostery found 39 trackers on that article. The irony is strong today.
  • cheeze 9y ago
    Doesn't Ghostery sell data to advertisers too?
    • whoisjuan 9y ago
      They probably do.
    • herogreen 9y ago
      Privacy Badger is a good alternative.
      • wand3r 9y ago
        I use uBlock on safari but that's it. Can you recommend an alternative to Privacy Badger (or a trustworthy implementation[0]) that works on Safari? HTTPS everywhere and PB are not supported. [0] Some company called softtonic has a "Privacy Badger" branded extension but I am skeptical about downloading from an unofficial source.
        • rbritton 9y ago
          DuckDuckGo’s extension maybe? https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/ https://spreadprivacy.com/privacy-simplified/
        • letsgetphysITal 9y ago
          uMatrix is uBlock for all the things. Or, enable advanced / expert mode in uBlock and use the "traffic light" system to configure blocks to specific domains as encountered.
    • christophertino 9y ago
      We don't sell any data to 3rd parties. You can also see our source code here https://github.com/ghostery/ghostery-extension https://github.com/ghostery/ghostery-extension
• akouris 9y ago
  I think that one should consider the possibility of FB group indirectly accessing this data. They don't have to collect information only directly from their FB/Instagram/WhatsApp apps: what they can do is buy information from other companies that publish thousands of "free" apps on appstores. You have to wonder how so many of these free apps seem to sustain themselves since GDN advertising does not seem to be profitable enough. FB group should be obligated to disclose whether they are buying information from these kinds of third parties. More importantly they should disclose whether the price they pay is illogical, effectively making them silent partners in an indirect scheme to access your camera/mic information, while at the same time maintaining the allegation that "we do not access your mic through our apps".
  • 1812Overture 9y ago
    They buy the info from massive data brokers, who buy data from other large and small data brokers, who buy the data from app makers, services, etc. User123@gmail.com expressed interest in buying kitty litter isn't exactly sensitive information so there's probably not much in the way of auditable logs maintained, probably impossible to determine the original provenance of the data in many cases.
• thiagocsf 9y ago
  I find it hard to take this article without a truckload of salt, given the Wall Street Journal is owned by News Corp. Murdoch has money to make by gaining leverage over FB. I haven’t had a Facebook account in almost 4 years and I block their traffic on my router, so I have no love for them. But I seriously doubt this story’s motives.
  • spinchange 9y ago
    FWIW (admitedly not very much, anecdotally from another rando HNer) The newsroom side of the Journal is among the vanguard of quality journalism and has largely remainined that way post-Murdoch. The editorial pages on the other hand are extremely opinionated and seemingly in a completely different reality than the newsroom.
• odammit 9y ago
  Paywall?! I assume they are doing it through toilet cams. Is this a rehash of the Reply All episode? https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying https://www.gimletmedia.com/reply-all/109-facebook-spying
• matthberg 9y ago
  http://archive.is/iCnWG http://archive.is/iCnWG non paywalled link.
  • skjerns 9y ago
    thanks!
• XMorbius 9y ago
  I think people really underestimate the power of ad retargeting and advertising analytics. Take in some location information and cross-reference it with friends lists and their product searches and you can explain 90% of these occurrences without voice data.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• ntxy 9y ago
  "How to limit the amount of data Facebook and advertisers are collecting about you" on wsj.com privacy badger and ublock origin go apeshit..
• brandontreb 9y ago
  I did quite a bit of Jailbreak/tweak dev in the past, and I was curious if you could just hook into AVAudioRecorder and show an alert any time it was invoked. So, I did this sort of thing years ago when I wrote a tweak for the InPulse smartwatch (later became Pebble) https://github.com/brandontreb/inPulseNotifier https://github.com/brandontreb/inPulseNotifier .I was able to hook into the system messaging, forward it to a custom bluetooth stack (sending it to the watch) and forward the message up the stack to be displayed by the system. It would stand to reason that the same sort of process would be effective for catching Facebook invoking audio recording. Once you hook into the AVAudioRecorder's interface, you could theoretically observe the following: 1. Open the Audio Recorder app and hit Record - An alert should show to prove your tweak is working. 2. Open the Facebook app. If you receive a similar alert at some point, you could at least prove that FB is invoking the audio recorder at some point without the user's expressed permission. Am I crazy or could this test actually work?
  • sine 9y ago
    It's possible Facebook could be using an exclusive method to access hardware more directly, much like how Uber had access to restricted developer debugging tools which allowed them to record the screen even when the app was closed. https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/uber-screen-record-iphone.html https://thehackernews.com/2017/10/uber-screen-record-iphone....
    • brandontreb 9y ago
      It is, however when building a mobile substrate tweak, you have visibility / access to the headers of every single system class. One could theoretically hook into any number of audio recording mechanisms (assuming they knew where to look ;) )
    • bluesign 9y ago
      yeah but this would be obvious (can be seen easily) as it will require some "entitlements"
    • willstrafach 9y ago
      I have checked. Facebook does not do this.
• deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
• intrasight 9y ago
  The only "app" I use to access Facebook and other social media is a well locked down browser. IMHO if you use apps, then your a schmuck and a sitting duck ;-) :-)
• MR4D 9y ago
  Obligatory link: https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121962391804567765 https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB121962391804567765 Key quote (from 1999 - Scott McNealy): "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." Darn - I hate when they're right.
• wpasc 9y ago
  Am I alone in not really caring about my privacy that much? I understand many people care about theirs, and I fully respect their right to their privacy. With that said, I could care less how much data Google/Facebook acquire on me. For now, all it is for more targeted advertisements. My tune would obviously change if that data were used in more malicious ways. But as long as it is advertising targets, I personally don't care.
  • jonathanjaeger 9y ago
    You're not alone. If we're talking unintended consequences of privacy invasions, I'm more inclined to not like something like letting people add you to groups without your permission (e.g. when people were outed by being added to a gay choir group on FB many years ago). I might be biased because I run ad campaigns on FB and the data is helpful (more efficient than Snapchat or Twitter where they have less data on you).
  • seangrant 9y ago
    The fear comes from exactly that. People aren't worried about targeted advertising. People are worried that swathes of their data isn't "theirs" anymore and can suddenly be used maliciously. Sure maybe not by Facebook. But Facebook's customers? The customers to those customers?
  • psyc 9y ago
    Of course not. Nobody I know IRL cares about their privacy, save one or two people who also happen to be generally paranoid (I don't mean it's paranoid to worry about Facebook, though). From the looks of the web, people I don't know are far, far less concerned about their privacy.
  • nabla9 9y ago
    Are you aware that 'your data' can involve your reactions and small actions like mouse moments and that all that data can be used to steer your emotions and behaviour without you noticing it. Then there is the the combined effect of everyones data that is threatening.
  • sverige 9y ago
• davidedicillo 9y ago
  1) FB doesn't listen to you. 2) Why are people getting so upset for seeing relevant ads? Ads is what pays for many of the services we use for free, would you rather see obnoxious irrelevant ads?
  • AlexandrB 9y ago
    In my experience most targeted ads are both creepy and irrelevant. It's quite an achievement. After shopping for custom USB keys online I saw custom USB key ads for months. Long after I had already found a supplier for them. The experience is not unlike being followed around a mall by a really pushy salesman after you glance at a toaster; because now he thinks all you want to buy is more toasters. If you bring this up with someone who works in adtech, the stock response is that we need even more tracking to fix it. It's like the adtech version of "no true Scotsman". Edit: That's not to mention what a huge waste of money this must be for the client buying this ad space. After ordering something from an Adafruit-like electronics shop, I saw ads for them around the web for quite a while. Often trying to sell me the very thing I had just ordered. How did I find them in the first place? Second or third page on Google search.
    • dllthomas 9y ago
      It's like there's an assumption of increasing marginal utility...
• crsmith 9y ago
  A couple of weeks ago I search for (on Google) and played (on YouTube, logged into my account) the Meow Mix song to play it for my 4 year old. Less than an hour later, Instagram showed a Meow Mix advertisement on my wife's account, on her phone. We have no animals. We have never had animals. She probably (though maybe not) has never logged into Instagram or Facebook on my browser. It was too much of a coincidence.
  • bigger_cheese 9y ago
    I'm not surprised. Facebook track browsing habits use it to share advertisements with your friends. I've shared this story on HN before this was what I experienced from 2016ish: I saw an ad buried in my facebook feed to "buy Gallium and Bismuth metal in Australia" I thought it was an oddly specific ad so I made a joking post about it - turned out several of my friends were seeing the same ad. A common friend we all shared who is a high school science teacher spoke up. He explained his class was studying the periodic table and he had purchased samples of Bismuth and Gallium online to show to the class. I'm absolutely convinced only reason my friends and I saw that ad was because we all shared a friend who was searching for this stuff online. That level of surveillance is really creepy to me...
  • bluesign 9y ago
    Probably tracked by your IP address.
  • 1812Overture 9y ago
    IP address, or if you have any shared accounts you could have a cookie identifying you as the same user. Ads also target connections of people who're interested in a product so you could get the ad from being friends/following someone who watched the videos. The ads will find you.
    • crsmith 9y ago
      Even if FB/Instagram knows my wife and I share an IP address or there were both FB/Instagram and Google cookies on the same browser where I searched for Meow Mix, how would Instagram know my Google/Youtube history?
• ppbutt 9y ago
  Any other source or way to get around the WSJ paywall?
  • jf 9y ago
    The best way to get around the WSJ paywall is to subscribe to the WSJ
• zamber 9y ago
  NetGuard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.netguard https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=eu.faircode.ne... allows for blocking traffic for apps per-domain and per-app. AFWall https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.ukanth.ufirewall https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=dev.ukanth.ufi... patches iptables to block domains used by apps that are not allowed network access. I did Android QA for a VPN/Proxy app. Had to benchmark battery usage and verify that we upgraded to SPDY properly. A lot of rooting, and tcpdumping. Eventually we got a WiFi network set up by sysadmins that mirrored traffic to one Ethernet socket. Plugged it in on a local SSH-accessible machine and I could tcpdump the whole WiFi traffic without fiddling with devices. Facebook and Instagram are awful network hogs. Both send a lot of packets every 5-10s when the screen is on to Facebooks tracking domains. I removed both and haven't looked back since I saw that. Google and other tracking companies of course are not better, hence the apps mentioned at the top. This is not a viable solution long-term though. They will find ways to eventually circumvent these restrictions. Now I'm thinking about setting up the same thing I had at work at home, just to see what kind of crap goes through my network daily. You're on Windows 10? Guess what Microsoft does. Install Wireshark and check for yourself how much MS domain hits you get. Not to mention HTTP traffic from random apps and/or websites that circumvent privacy protection domain lists. The implication here is that you're the product but not for that company or another. You're for all of them, ISP included. The more crap leaks on your network the more they know and sell. As a side note, I have no idea why DNS traffic still goes in pretty much plaintext... Have you heard about tracking data exchanges? The overall problem is that everyone is spying on you on multiple levels because there's money to be made on profiling. Facebook just grabs the headlines. Apps listening to you are scary but the fact is you don't have to speak to be heard by them.
• nathanken 9y ago
  I've disabled auto update for all apps on my android. However, Facebook and Messenger still updates automatically. This itself raises suspicion of Facebook's control over my phone.
  • aylmao 9y ago
    1. Some big features in Facebook/Messenger already exist in the app, and are just enabled/disabled remotely. This is pretty common in most big apps, it's how they can control rollouts. For example, the Snapchat design update: not everyone got it at the same time because the code was living in the app and they gradually enabled it for each user. 2. Wouldn't surprise me if part of the app were heavily reliant on things that can be updated remotely. Chunks of big apps will sometimes be just views fetching some web components. Facebook created React Native, and iirc it can be updated dynamically, like a web site. When you have lots of people working on an app you have a high probability of introducing bugs. I worked at a company that shipped a faulty update; it looked OK to users, but it was essentially DDoS-ing the servers. Having to wait for the App Store to approve your app to fix things like that is annoying and costly, so people tend to look for alternatives.
• antiviral 9y ago
  I find this statement from Facebook in the article to be oddly worded, as if it was carefully constructed by a lawyer to avoid getting caught in a lie: "Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." OK... so they are saying they don't use your microphone to target ads. But how about precisely enumerating how FB uses your microphone? Do they use it for any purpose other than helping you communicate during a call? Do they try to infer any persona information about you, which can then be used indirectly to make money from your data? I too have had odd coincidences where eerily relevant ads show up after I have had a conversation. If only FB was more transparent about what they do, I might not be so paranoid about it.
  • linuxftw 9y ago
    I think you're on to something here about the indirection. I too have witnessed the uncanny ads, but not even from my own phone (I don't have Facebook on my phone). A friend mentioned a particular restaurant I have never been to, been near, or searched for. I can only assume my friend's conversation was geo-tagged either by my phone (android, no non-system mic access), or the data was combined on the server end to place both of us at the same place / same time, and used his recording to market to me. I'd also like to note, the 'amount of bandwidth needed' is almost nothing by today's standards. Not to mention it can wait to transmit that data until on wifi. 8khz audio (telephone quality) is just kilobytes per second. A reasonably unsophisticated algorithm could trim the audio for an highs and lows (IE, statistically, sound below or above some dB threshold is trimmed because it won't be useful) and uploaded. We're talking about just a few kb per conversation. Of course, the Facebook app is a memory, storage, and cpu hog (IMO), so I don't think it's unreasonable that given today's modern phone hardware some word recognition software may be present on devices themselves.
    • chemeng 9y ago
      I wonder whether there is another mechanism at play. Often when I have conversations with friends, it's likely that either I or they search a term, or have done so recently. Couple that with the social graph and location tracking, and it's very easy for Facebook/Google to target an ad knowing when I interacted with another person and assume that I may have interest in the term that was recently searched by them.
• debt 9y ago
  It seems to be pretty basic. They access the photos within the photo library and the location of the device(both of which you've most likely granted Facebook to access). FB then cross reference with any other devices nearby and any identified objects within the photos are cross referenced with their ad inventory.
• mirimir 9y ago
  As my meatspace identity, I don't worry about this stuff very much. Indeed, it would be an identifier for me to do so. In meatspace, I'm just a regular guy. Mirimir, he's the privacy freak. Anything that I want to keep private, I do as a compartmentalized persona. Separate hardware. Separate LAN. Separate Internet connection path. No overlapping Internet activity or interests.
  • exolymph 9y ago
    Hell yeah, OPSEC!
• aussieguy123 9y ago
  I just revoked the location permission on android, facebooks app still works fine
• natch 9y ago
  I've seen stories where people could not explain why they were suddenly seeing certain ads in their feeds, and they thought Facebook had recorded some keywords from a conversation. For example one guy had a buddy who had recently purchased a certain motorcycle, and all of a sudden he started seeing ads for that motorcycle. But... really there's a simpler explanation than the microphone. Although of course it doesn't by itself rule out the microphone being used. Facebook can just see when you are in the same location as some other people, and see what things those other people are into, and then signal whatever ad networks that you might also be a prospect for those things. Visit your buddy and see his new bike? Start getting ads for the same bike. No audio needed, just location services and some posts on FB from your buddy about his motorcycle. And there are other sensors beyond that. A lot of things are possible once the user has granted permission for use of various inputs. Also if it is the microphone as the story suggests it could be in some cases, the evidence for it being any one particular app is thin. There are other apps that get granted microphone access by users all the time, and some of them should be looked at, not just Facebook. Not to defend Facebook here, but the net should be cast wider than just one app, even if the ads are appearing on Facebook, which itself is perfectly capable of gleaning interest information from multiple sources including other ad networks fed by other apps.
• akkartik 9y ago
  Already said a few months ago: https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-microphone https://www.wired.com/story/facebooks-listening-smartphone-m...
• ainiriand 9y ago
  In my humble opinion, we are missing something here. I am not a Facebook user since a long time. But something really interesting happens whenever me or my girlfriend are talking about a particular product. She gets related ads in the web wherever she goes. She has Facebook installed in the phone while I don't. But the interesting thing is that this is not happening to me. Never. I do not get ads for scuba diving suits if we speak about it. She does. How can we explain this?
  • jjeaff 9y ago
    Sounds like she is just more context aware. I skim past ads and never notice them. Some people might take note if the ad is something they had recently discussed.
    • ainiriand 9y ago
      Well, I pretty much adblock everything... I need to keep thinking a bit more about this.
      • runeb 9y ago
        So you are asking why you do not receive the same ads your girlfriend is receiving and then later telling us you adblock everything?
        • ainiriand 9y ago
          Almost everything, not in the phone for example. Not at work either. I use uBlock Origin at home.
  • sexy_seedbox 9y ago
    Does she scuba dive as well? Or she may have possibly mentioned that you scuba dive in a message to a friend? Or somebody posted a photo of you related to scuba diving without you knowing?
    • 9y ago
• alexandercrohde 9y ago
  If somebody wants to definitively answer this, there's no reason you couldn't just say random advertising related words in front of your phone (1 per day) and check how many come up in your search. There are basic statistical methods to establish if the results can be explained by chance. This would have the upside of not requiring any reverse-engineering.
  • remir 9y ago
    Yeah. For example, if you don't own a cat, you could just talk about cats and brands of cat food in front of your phone for a while. If you end up with a bunch of ads for cat products, then that would be seriously weird.
    • madeofpalk 9y ago
      In saying that, Twitter thinks I: * Own a cat, dog and other animal * Have between $100k- $999k liquid investible assets * Have a net worth between $1 and $1m * Am highly affluent * Am a high spender * Am a frugal spender * Own a house * Have multiple families Yet none of these are true (well, I guess apart from the 'has income' demographic I'm in). I know Twitter isn't known for being an advertising powerhouse (esp. compared to Facebook), but I wouldn't take too much stock in Facebook serving me up irrelevant ads. I moved to the other side of the world 2 months, updated my "living" location on Facebook and have been tagged at multiple locations in my new city, yet Facebook still serves me ads for buying an iPhone or Car back in my home town. https://imgur.com/a/HIkic https://imgur.com/a/HIkic
  • delroth 9y ago
    Wouldn't this still be subject to confirmation bias? As in: you'd be more likely to notice advertisement that is related to a word you pronounced recently, since you would be training your brain to look carefully for these words.
  • ng-user 9y ago
    I don't have a link right now (youtube though) but I saw a couple do this with 'cat food' and it ultimately resulted in a brigade of ads despite not owning a cat.
• ggg9990 9y ago
  The notion that Facebook is secretly recording your microphone is beyond idiotic and shows how ignorant the general population is (and consequently how vulnerable). It is the fantasy of an aspiring but untalented screenwriter. Facebook isn’t spying on your microphone because they don’t have to. They know enough about you to monetize the shit out of you from things that are out in the open. When the populace trusts Facebook and Google with nearly their entire digital lives, and the DOJ lets these giants acquire the rest without a fight, why would they need to resort to clumsy subterfuge?
• foobaw 9y ago
  It's simply impossible for FB to record audio. When I worked in the OEM industry, there were rigorous standards and compliances that had to be met to ship our phones. If an app was invoking audio recording without the proper permissions, this would be a huge red flag. Google would never approve the phone to be shipped as it would be breaking their CDD. Also, if audio data was being transmitted using some obscure APN that does not use mobile data or Wi-Fi, OEMs could still easily detect these from the modem side, no matter how encrypted the data is. After all, the app is still JUST an app, in the system folder with all the other apps like Candy Crush. Unless this specific audio recording feature was built into the Android framework, I will say it is 100% impossible. Note: this is just for Android. I have no idea how iOS works.
  • mkonecny 9y ago
    > It's simply impossible for FB to record audio. You should check your sources again - that statement is false.... You only have to look at the release notes from the dev preview on Android P today to see that was possible for any background app to access the camera and microphone at any time: https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html#all-apps https://developer.android.com/preview/behavior-changes.html#... > Android P strengthens privacy by limiting the ability of background apps to access user input and sensor data. If your app is running in the background on a device running Android P, the system applies the following restrictions to your app: Your app cannot access the microphone or camera.
    • foobaw 9y ago
      It says that apps in the "background" cannot access user input and sensor data. This means that even if the app gains permission in the foreground, it won't have access when the app is running in the background. Note that this use case was extremely rare anyway, but I know Google did this simply to ease people's minds (I know several people on the Android framework team).
      • mkonecny 9y ago
        Ooops, I misread your message. You are stating they can't access your microphone without the permission - I'm not refuting that
• sinemetu11 9y ago
  On desktop I use a custom hosts file redirecting all facebook and instagram traffic to localhost. Can the same be done on my iphone? A "like" or "instagram this" widget is all they need to track basically everything you do even if you don't have fb.
  • yeeeeeeeeee 9y ago
    This doesn't always work because lots of trackers use unique domains. I'd suggest using a different browser or installing a tracking removing extension.
• dav43 9y ago
  Signed up for Facebook Workplace trial and let it expire. They’ve now shared our details with third party implantation consultants who are approaching us. Not great.
  • jaaames 9y ago
    I know that's a typo, but let this comment age a few years and it may not be.
• kylelibra 9y ago
  What is Facebook going to do about GDPR?
• vadimberman 9y ago
  > Facebook works directly with six data brokers, all of which allow you to opt out from their sharing of your personal data, everything from your email to your purchase history. And that sort of explains everything. I kept wondering how the info that keep to the Google-verse (search, Gmail) makes it to Facebook. Now I know. Does it mean that Google collaborates with these data brokers? While it doesn't harm them directly, it seems like a myopic thing to do, arming a company that may undercut your sole major source of income. Yes, I imagine they take it directly from the device, but doesn't Google have control over the Android internals? Also, I am in somewhat unique position. Being a Microsoft zealot, I still carry a Windows phone (v8.1) with slowly dying services. I almost don't use Facebook yet I still get these too relevant ads, mostly according to what I google on my desktop.
  • gvurrdon 9y ago
    How much use do you make of Bing, if you don't mind me asking? Is it a case of mainly using it (as you are a Microsoft fan) but occasionally needing to refer to a Google search?
    • vadimberman 9y ago
      I am more used to Google which I use on the desktop, but when on the phone, I use both interchangeably. When it comes to the US and global content, there is virtually no difference in the results. Google is much better in the local content and the knowledge graph results though, as well as the maps. Video search is better in Bing.
• halayli 9y ago
  I have suspicion that at least instagram is listening. I started saying words that I've never looked up for in the past, nor have I ever saw an ad related to them like 'dog walker', 'babies'.. and over the course of minutes I started seeing ads for both. Not sure how to explain this.
• habosa 9y ago
  I work at Google and I'm a long time hobbyist Android developer. I have a lot of non-technical friends ask me about this. What I always say is that this would not be possible. To constantly listen for audio, process it, and upload the results would use so much data and battery that you'd notice. Only a plugged in laptop/desktop could get away with this. Am I wrong? Would it even be technically feasible for Facebook to listen all the time?
  • sattoshi 9y ago
    "OK Google" seems to handle it.
    • deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    • habosa 9y ago
      I'm pretty sure it's optimized to listen for a single hotword and then initiate the network connection to process what comes next. What people accuse Facebook of doing would require constant processing of the audio stream for random interesting tokens. Either process on device and then send metadata (more battery, less network) or send the raw stream and process on the server (less battery, more network).
  • flukus 9y ago
    > To constantly listen for audio, process it, and upload the results would use so much data and battery that you'd notice. A few years ago I uninstalled the official facebook app because it was using all of my battery and a fair bit of data, even when I wasn't actively using it. The battery usage record in the settings indicated the facebook app was the cause. After removal it felt like I'd bought a new phone, everything was running so much faster. I recommended the change to friends who saw similar results. I don't know if it was maliciousness or incompetence behind the battery usage, but it would seem that you can get away with it largely unnoticed.
  • AndrewUnmuted 9y ago
    There's no reason the application must always be listening. Facebook could do their voodoo to determine when during the day you are most likely to be in a social atmosphere, and begin listening to the microphone only during that range of time. Processing and uploading doesn't have to happen all at once. They could analyze/process the audio while you're asleep. The power drain would be negligible - or completely unnoticeable if your phone is charging while you sleep. Data obtained from these processes could be uploaded in chunks, hidden inside the photos and videos you upload from the Facebook app. So, in my opinion, not only is this all possible, it'd be not too difficult for Facebook to hide it from the general public.
• product50 9y ago
  I know we are all really concerned about privacy but we need to take a step back here for a second. Facebook will continue to show you ads - that will never stop. By following what the author mentions in his article, all that will happen is that you will see less relevant and useless ads. Would you rather less ads which are useful or those which are completely disconnected from what you want? I have discovered some really nice SMB stores via FB ads - that would have never happened otherwise. Good luck to the author as now he will see generic AT&T and Galaxy S9 ads. Privacy has its costs and one should make an informed decision eitherways.
  • jeena 9y ago
    It might be just me, but I rather see irellevant ads like on TV which don't have that much power influencing my decisions on what to buy and what not to buy than a really targeted ad which makes it almost impossible to resist to spend my money on something I really don't need but just want.
    • product50 9y ago
      In that case, you should follow the author's steps. I personally love the ads which FB and Google show - they are well targeted and look nice and some of them are very influential which I think is a good thing. Otherwise, I will still see ads but they aren't that helpful and just take up space.
      • confounded 9y ago
        This might sound snarky, but I don’t mean it to. Why do you need help from targeted advertising? What are the things where targeted advertising is a good way to get help? Is targeted advertising on Instagram and Facebook the zenith of this help for you? Can you imagine another way of getting this help?
        • product50 9y ago
          Let me give you an example. While I was furniture shopping for my house, FB showed an ad of a nice boutique furniture store which opened less than a mile from where I lived. Since this was a new store, it had no Yelp reviews and had no word of mouth references. I visited the store and absolutely loved and bought a number of large items from there. I believe this is a positive development and these ads, at least to me, are a lot better than some of the non targeted things I see.
• epx 9y ago
  I uninstalled FB from my phone because it cut the battery life in one third, even if not used at all. One can imagine how busy it was behind the curtain to need all these joules...
• ShorsHammer 9y ago
  For all the perhaps unfounded paranoia here and elsewhere, still yet to see a major manufacturer offer hardware camera/mic switches. Call me cynical but surely there's some top-down pressure about adding a simple $0.07 component to $1000+ devices.
• Torai 9y ago
  Full article here: http://archive.is/dghhy http://archive.is/dghhy
  • tontonius 9y ago
    The real MVP is always in the comments
    • Torai 9y ago
      Thank you!
• madmax96 9y ago
  Honest question: If this behavior disturbs us so much, why does anyone continue using Facebook?
  • lucozade 9y ago
    I'd suggest it's because 'us' is a very small, and not exactly unbiased, sample of 'anyone'.
• jokoon 9y ago
  I have an android 6, from archos, which is relatively clean in term of vendor layer. I regularly go in the storage part of apps, and despite the fact that I don't use many apps, they still manage to generate megabytes of data, which are not clean by the "clean cache" functionality. I'm not using it for texts and calls, I only use it with wifi, but still, I have low trust in the android ecosystem.
• megamindbrian2 9y ago
  I wish they would disable distractions while driving.
  • mmariani 9y ago
    It’s really too easy to tap the “I’m not driving” button. We have a global cell-phone-use-while-driving epidemic going on that’s taking way too many innocent lives. I wish tech companies would start sharing phone use data while driving. That’s when people will start to care about the lives of others and the rule of law, the moment they see their premiums going up things will get better rather quickly.
• k3a 9y ago
  GNU founder Stallman has a big page with many other reasons against using Facebook. You should read it too.. https://stallman.org/facebook.html https://stallman.org/facebook.html