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Genuine question: is there definite proof that phones and services (Siri/Alexa/Google assistant) are NOT listening and recording everything? I've always refused

Genuine question: is there definite proof that phones and services (Siri/Alexa/Google assistant) are NOT listening and recording everything? I've always refused to use those services because I have no idea what kind of data they collect, regardless of what they claim.

jsjohnst 8y ago
> are NOT listening and recording everything Yes, I can definitively say they do not record everything. Listening however is hard to prove conclusively.
zdkl 8y ago
The general assumption is someone probably would notice suspicious traffic from the device, or an unexplained power draw, or even undocumented parts. But I don't know either, haven't checked myself!
shagie 8y ago
Yes. Attach the device to a network where you can monitor the amount of traffic (don’t need to monitor the actual content). Streaming voice takes a bit of data. That traffic would be clearly evident. 320kbps rate translates to 2.40 MB per minute or about 1 GB every 8h. I can assure you my data plan would notice that. As I don’t see gigabytes going out of my devices (I have several amazon and apple devices at home), it’s fairly safe to say they aren’t uploading all the noises of the house for analysis.
- shabble 8y ago
  Why on earth would you be streaming 320kbps? Roughly telephone-equivalent bitrate is <100kbps, potentially down to 8kbps or so for (bad) speech. Noise-gating or even rudimentary voice detection (sound is a voice, not random ambient) can reduce that duty cycle to a tiny fraction. So you could get a lot of useful information out for <100MB/day. If you wanted to be sneaky, there are probably viable ways of hiding it from casual detection; buffering locally and appending to user-uploads (images, video, voice) when there's already data flowing. Or do some pre-processing on the device to slim it down even more. Maybe only when it's on external charge to avoid running the battery down too far. I'm not suggesting this is actually happening, but it's far more plausible than your estimates suggest.
- ksherlock 8y ago
  Nice try zuck. Prove that Facebook didn't infiltrate the iPhone supply line to plant secret microphones (not even Apple knows about them!) that are triggered by the word "shirt" and communicate back a shirt count to the facebook by delaying TCP packets ever so slightly. You can't disprove it! Nobody can!

jsjohnst 8y ago

> are NOT listening and recording everything Yes, I can definitively say they do not record everything. Listening however is hard to prove conclusively.

zdkl 8y ago

The general assumption is someone probably would notice suspicious traffic from the device, or an unexplained power draw, or even undocumented parts. But I don't know either, haven't checked myself!

shagie 8y ago

Yes. Attach the device to a network where you can monitor the amount of traffic (don’t need to monitor the actual content). Streaming voice takes a bit of data. That traffic would be clearly evident. 320kbps rate translates to 2.40 MB per minute or about 1 GB every 8h. I can assure you my data plan would notice that. As I don’t see gigabytes going out of my devices (I have several amazon and apple devices at home), it’s fairly safe to say they aren’t uploading all the noises of the house for analysis.

shabble 8y ago
Why on earth would you be streaming 320kbps? Roughly telephone-equivalent bitrate is <100kbps, potentially down to 8kbps or so for (bad) speech. Noise-gating or even rudimentary voice detection (sound is a voice, not random ambient) can reduce that duty cycle to a tiny fraction. So you could get a lot of useful information out for <100MB/day. If you wanted to be sneaky, there are probably viable ways of hiding it from casual detection; buffering locally and appending to user-uploads (images, video, voice) when there's already data flowing. Or do some pre-processing on the device to slim it down even more. Maybe only when it's on external charge to avoid running the battery down too far. I'm not suggesting this is actually happening, but it's far more plausible than your estimates suggest.
ksherlock 8y ago
Nice try zuck. Prove that Facebook didn't infiltrate the iPhone supply line to plant secret microphones (not even Apple knows about them!) that are triggered by the word "shirt" and communicate back a shirt count to the facebook by delaying TCP packets ever so slightly. You can't disprove it! Nobody can!