5 ms·

Your voice is already compromised if you use a smartphone or windows/Mac with a mic.

lifty 7y ago
If you are a target of the NSA or some other state actor, then perhaps. If not, and you take a bit of care to disable the voice assistant on your devices (Siri, Google. etc), then you should be fine.
- Rooster61 7y ago
  That just disables the voice assistant. It does nothing to ensure that your mic isn't on, listening, and recording at any time. I've had too many targeted ads start popping up after conversations with people to be convinced otherwise.
  - arbitrage 7y ago
    it's observer bias, nothing more. test it out. pick a phrase, my spouse and i chose "snowmobile". For the next week, we had random conversations about how cool snowmobiles are, how badly we wanted one, what price we were willing to pay, financing, etc. we peppered our conversations with click bait, honestly. neither of us particularly ever had any interest whatsoever in snowmobiles, so we figured this would be a pretty ok test for anecdata. at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.
    - iamricks 7y ago
      I think people just underestimate how good targeted ads are. They're probably predicting something we might want before we even realize we want it.
    - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
      Do you live somewhere snowmobile advertisers are likely to target?
      - bluGill 7y ago
        Even if he doesn't there are snowmobile resorts. People pay good money to go to places with a lot of snow, rent a snowmobile and ride in the wilderness for a week. Also a fair number of people live where a snowmobile isn't practical but have a cabin where they are and so they will be making weekend trips to where they are practical. Your point stands though, anyone who lives in the wrong area is unlikely to be targeted if the only indication they might want a snowmobile is home conversion. If you are serious you will do other searches (tracked for sure), and have location history in a target area (might not be track able, these area often have poor cell coverage)
    - Rooster61 7y ago
      > At the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen. There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it. It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into, yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an interest.
      - mrobot 7y ago
        One thing i thought of and wanted to test: what if you yourself don't do any internet queries but someone on the same network as you does? I've had conversations with people, one time we were talking about a concert venue which i did not look up, but i did start to receive ads for that concert venue. It creeped me out initially, but I believe the other person on the same home network was googling or looking for information on that venue on their phone. I believe we were just associated together for advertisement purposes.
        wolfgang42 7y ago
        I’m pretty sure this happens. When I was doing work with NetSuite, my roommate (who has no interest in anything remotely related to enterprise software, and doesn’t have any other devices that could have been listening in) started getting ads for them on his laptop. It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.
    - antonzabirko 7y ago
      That experiment is meaningless my friend. Aside from it not being applicable, ads are only a fraction of the issue.
  - slipheen 7y ago
    Your defeatism is making things worse not better. Your message is basically "You're already screwed, why bother trying?" Why act that way? Who are you helping? If you support privacy, then people taking steps to try to share less data ought to be encouraged, right? Maybe it's not perfect - But it's worth trying to do better.
    - Rooster61 7y ago
      In what way did my message suggest defeatism? I take active steps to minimize when and how the microphones around me listen in. In no way do I subscribe to the idea that "we are already screwed". Please do not take the worst possible interpretation of what people say on HN. It's in the guidelines and generally looked down upon. This is not reddit.
      - pkalinowski 7y ago
        Android doesn't listen. You can check by yourself using adb logcat
    - antonzabirko 7y ago
      No, stop wasting your energy on change you won't make happen. Imagine if every innovator spent their time appealing to others.
  - Jarwain 7y ago
    My pet theory is that this is actually a geo-location type of tracking, combined with the recency illusion. Let's say person A was doing research on a product they're interested in buying. That product category is now associated with person A. Person A goes and visits person B. Because our phones track where we go by default for most people, now there's an association between Person A and Person B, and a potential likelihood that person B is also interested in that product. Thus the occasional ad shows up for the product Person A was researching. Since Person A and Person B are friends, it's possible Person A will talk about the product they're interested in. Person B now notices that they're getting ads for the product that Person A talked about.
- antonzabirko 7y ago
  It's not the NSA that does it, it's Microsoft, apple, Huawei, and so on. And no, disabling the voice apps does not out you out of telemetry.
  - mthoms 7y ago
    Do you have any citation/proof? Or is this just a suspicion?
_def 7y ago
Good thing it runs on a RPi then.
lukifer 7y ago
One theory of security is that you can't ever be truly secure; but you can make it difficult/expensive for your security to be violated. If you lock the door, someone can always break a window, but that creates more noise and therefore more risk, making an intruder more likely to seek a softer target. A ten-foot wall can be breached, but it will likely dissuade anyone without an eleven-foot ladder. The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.

If you are a target of the NSA or some other state actor, then perhaps. If not, and you take a bit of care to disable the voice assistant on your devices (Siri, Google. etc), then you should be fine.

Rooster61 7y ago
That just disables the voice assistant. It does nothing to ensure that your mic isn't on, listening, and recording at any time. I've had too many targeted ads start popping up after conversations with people to be convinced otherwise.
- arbitrage 7y ago
  it's observer bias, nothing more. test it out. pick a phrase, my spouse and i chose "snowmobile". For the next week, we had random conversations about how cool snowmobiles are, how badly we wanted one, what price we were willing to pay, financing, etc. we peppered our conversations with click bait, honestly. neither of us particularly ever had any interest whatsoever in snowmobiles, so we figured this would be a pretty ok test for anecdata. at the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. likely what is happening is that you searched something somewhere on your phone, then brought it up in conversation, then saw an increase in ads related to that subject.
  - iamricks 7y ago
    I think people just underestimate how good targeted ads are. They're probably predicting something we might want before we even realize we want it.
  - TheSpiceIsLife 7y ago
    Do you live somewhere snowmobile advertisers are likely to target?
    - bluGill 7y ago
      Even if he doesn't there are snowmobile resorts. People pay good money to go to places with a lot of snow, rent a snowmobile and ride in the wilderness for a week. Also a fair number of people live where a snowmobile isn't practical but have a cabin where they are and so they will be making weekend trips to where they are practical. Your point stands though, anyone who lives in the wrong area is unlikely to be targeted if the only indication they might want a snowmobile is home conversion. If you are serious you will do other searches (tracked for sure), and have location history in a target area (might not be track able, these area often have poor cell coverage)
  - Rooster61 7y ago
    > At the end of the week, we both saw no increase or even a mention in our targeted adverts regarding snowmobiles. While I do respect you and your spouse for trying this experiment, it's entirely too small a sample size to really prove that this doesn't happen. There are a ton of variables involved, the biggest being which advertisers may or may not be listening in at any given time. It's hardly a controlled experiment, and I can't say I can put any stock in it. It also does not prove that it is observer bias. I have had things pop up that I am %100 absolutely positive I never in any way shape or form looked into, yet there the ads were after a short conversations with others who did have an interest.
    - mrobot 7y ago
      One thing i thought of and wanted to test: what if you yourself don't do any internet queries but someone on the same network as you does? I've had conversations with people, one time we were talking about a concert venue which i did not look up, but i did start to receive ads for that concert venue. It creeped me out initially, but I believe the other person on the same home network was googling or looking for information on that venue on their phone. I believe we were just associated together for advertisement purposes.
      - wolfgang42 7y ago
        I’m pretty sure this happens. When I was doing work with NetSuite, my roommate (who has no interest in anything remotely related to enterprise software, and doesn’t have any other devices that could have been listening in) started getting ads for them on his laptop. It makes sense for them to target by IP, so if one person in an office is researching the product they can start targeting the entire office and maybe get their ad in front of an exec who can make a purchasing decision.
  - antonzabirko 7y ago
    That experiment is meaningless my friend. Aside from it not being applicable, ads are only a fraction of the issue.
- slipheen 7y ago
  Your defeatism is making things worse not better. Your message is basically "You're already screwed, why bother trying?" Why act that way? Who are you helping? If you support privacy, then people taking steps to try to share less data ought to be encouraged, right? Maybe it's not perfect - But it's worth trying to do better.
  - Rooster61 7y ago
    In what way did my message suggest defeatism? I take active steps to minimize when and how the microphones around me listen in. In no way do I subscribe to the idea that "we are already screwed". Please do not take the worst possible interpretation of what people say on HN. It's in the guidelines and generally looked down upon. This is not reddit.
    - pkalinowski 7y ago
      Android doesn't listen. You can check by yourself using adb logcat
  - antonzabirko 7y ago
    No, stop wasting your energy on change you won't make happen. Imagine if every innovator spent their time appealing to others.
- Jarwain 7y ago
  My pet theory is that this is actually a geo-location type of tracking, combined with the recency illusion. Let's say person A was doing research on a product they're interested in buying. That product category is now associated with person A. Person A goes and visits person B. Because our phones track where we go by default for most people, now there's an association between Person A and Person B, and a potential likelihood that person B is also interested in that product. Thus the occasional ad shows up for the product Person A was researching. Since Person A and Person B are friends, it's possible Person A will talk about the product they're interested in. Person B now notices that they're getting ads for the product that Person A talked about.
antonzabirko 7y ago
It's not the NSA that does it, it's Microsoft, apple, Huawei, and so on. And no, disabling the voice apps does not out you out of telemetry.
- mthoms 7y ago
  Do you have any citation/proof? Or is this just a suspicion?

_def 7y ago

Good thing it runs on a RPi then.

lukifer 7y ago

One theory of security is that you can't ever be truly secure; but you can make it difficult/expensive for your security to be violated. If you lock the door, someone can always break a window, but that creates more noise and therefore more risk, making an intruder more likely to seek a softer target. A ten-foot wall can be breached, but it will likely dissuade anyone without an eleven-foot ladder. The problem with mass surveillance is not that the NSA/etc can breach anyone they want; that's effectively always been true. It's that it's cheap to breach everyone, by default, all the time. Taking reasonable precautions such that you can't have your data swept up cheaply, instead requiring targeted human effort and/or a court order, does create a deterrent, and helps counteract the current imbalance of power between TLAs and We The People.