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I’ve never noticed this myself: I’ve always assumed that what is actually going on is that people’s phone usage is more correlated with what they’re thinking/ta

I’ve never noticed this myself: I’ve always assumed that what is actually going on is that people’s phone usage is more correlated with what they’re thinking/talking about than they realize and ad companies have gotten pretty good at uncovering these latent connections (e.g. the story about Target deducing someone was pregnant from seemingly unrelated shopping patterns).

srtjstjsj 6y ago
The Target thing was for related shopping. The scandal was thar Target noticed before she told people explicitly.
strogonoff 6y ago
I remember that story. However, what I observed with Android’s Google (or is it called Google News?) app last year was a tight feedback loop: after talking a little about %SUBJECT% near the phone, and refreshing the feed within the next minute or two, a relevant article from past few days showed up. (Similar to Vice’s article I linked, but faster.) Again, the owner of the device saw that as a convenience feature and consciously did not set the phone up to prevent it, which made me feel a little old-fashioned and unnecessarily paranoid. Also, unlike Vice’s article, in the scenario I have witnessed the recording did not necessarily have to leave the phone: the news app could have kept a large cache of recent articles and locally pick the ones matching the %SUBJECT% that we spoke about. I am inclined to believe that Google, given their business model and scale, is unlikely to store voice data insecurely or insufficiently de-anonymized, so I’m primarily worried about third-party apps getting access to always-on microphone without visual feedback. (Hopefully it’s not very likely and app stores have tools to detect nefarious uses of relevant APIs at review stage.)
- fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
  I’d like to see an actual technical write up of this: network logs, tracing of the android device activity etc. My original impression was that the reason why mobile voice assistants have trigger words is that anything more complicated isn’t feasible as an always-on feature. (Although, I do remember stories about the Facebook app using the microphone to suggest that you post a status update about the movie or tv show you’re watching, so maybe it’s more feasible than I imagine).
  - BoorishBears 6y ago
    You won't find one because it doesn't exist. As a person who's made a living the last few years working in the guts of Android on embedded devices, there are so many holes in this way too common myth that phones are listening all the time. You don't even need to dive into the technical aspect of it, what on earth is the risk reward here?! Risk: Forever break the trust people have in your devices, this isn't some grey area intrusive tracking that would just get swept under the rug... Reward: Get noisy info about people's interests when you literally own the device that contains more information about than their own short term memory does! It's nonsensical, and there's no way that Google could do this that wouldn't already have been caught. I mean is the theory that all Google devices do it and somehow no OEM has realized their microphone is getting accessed? (Because even with the lowest level access on the device, modern microphones are not so unsophisticated, there's no universal way to access it in a way a manufacturer wouldn't catch onto sooner or later Or Google did this but only on phones they own or something? It's nonsense.
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      > You won't find one because it doesn't exist. There is no proof it happens, and no proof it doesn’t happen, because it’s non-trivial to detect based on network activity. The only evidence is observing content relevant to what was being spoken about being suggested across apps. > Risk: Forever break the trust people have in your devices, this isn't some grey area intrusive tracking that would just get swept under the rug... Reward: get people to love your services for relevant suggestions. Believe it or not, there are people outside the extra privacy-conscious bubble who do not at all mind their devices listening. > Or Google did this but only on phones they own or something? I am pretty sure this depends on software. I have seen this demonstrated on a Google-branded phone with a Google app.
      - BoorishBears 6y ago
        > Reward: get people to love your services for relevant suggestions. Believe it or not, there are people outside the extra privacy-conscious bubble who do not at all mind their devices listening. Like I already pointed out this is nonsense. Always on listening even with perfect parsing would INCREDIBLY noisy. There are a million and one reasons for a term to come up in speech. The simplest conversation could surface hundreds of targeting terms. Meanwhile they literally own the device and the services most people use. They have your search, they have your email, they have social graphs. They can literally make inferences before you even think to talk about them with other people! (and we've seen this happen before with things like disease and pregnancy reveals) We're at the point where most people's cell phones hold more personal data than they could even recall on demand. So why on earth would they go and muddy all that easily weighted data with noisy data like everything you say, literally every other form of interaction is already giving them better more concise information about you... - > There is no proof it happens, and no proof it doesn’t happen, because it’s non-trivial to detect based on network activity. The only evidence is observing content relevant to what was being spoken about being suggested across apps. I can't believe people are entertaining this kind of stuff on HN. You make an unreasonable claim... then act like because you yourself can't prove your unreasonable claim it should be entertained? What? That's not how that works. You have no actual proof for your unreasonable claim... then that's it. It ends there. The burden doesn't suddenly fall on others to prove the contrary! Come back with even a modicum of proof. Literally any real proof other than anecdotes where the ad companies who literally have almost all the data in your life anyways are able to come up with topics you're interested in... and maybe someone will entertain this. And no, talking about something and getting an ad for it after is not proof any more than having a leaf fall on your head while you stand under in a mid-autumn forest right after you whispered "gravity" is proof that the forest is listening to your words.

srtjstjsj 6y ago

The Target thing was for related shopping. The scandal was thar Target noticed before she told people explicitly.

strogonoff 6y ago

I remember that story. However, what I observed with Android’s Google (or is it called Google News?) app last year was a tight feedback loop: after talking a little about %SUBJECT% near the phone, and refreshing the feed within the next minute or two, a relevant article from past few days showed up. (Similar to Vice’s article I linked, but faster.) Again, the owner of the device saw that as a convenience feature and consciously did not set the phone up to prevent it, which made me feel a little old-fashioned and unnecessarily paranoid. Also, unlike Vice’s article, in the scenario I have witnessed the recording did not necessarily have to leave the phone: the news app could have kept a large cache of recent articles and locally pick the ones matching the %SUBJECT% that we spoke about. I am inclined to believe that Google, given their business model and scale, is unlikely to store voice data insecurely or insufficiently de-anonymized, so I’m primarily worried about third-party apps getting access to always-on microphone without visual feedback. (Hopefully it’s not very likely and app stores have tools to detect nefarious uses of relevant APIs at review stage.)

fiddlerwoaroof 6y ago
I’d like to see an actual technical write up of this: network logs, tracing of the android device activity etc. My original impression was that the reason why mobile voice assistants have trigger words is that anything more complicated isn’t feasible as an always-on feature. (Although, I do remember stories about the Facebook app using the microphone to suggest that you post a status update about the movie or tv show you’re watching, so maybe it’s more feasible than I imagine).
- BoorishBears 6y ago
  You won't find one because it doesn't exist. As a person who's made a living the last few years working in the guts of Android on embedded devices, there are so many holes in this way too common myth that phones are listening all the time. You don't even need to dive into the technical aspect of it, what on earth is the risk reward here?! Risk: Forever break the trust people have in your devices, this isn't some grey area intrusive tracking that would just get swept under the rug... Reward: Get noisy info about people's interests when you literally own the device that contains more information about than their own short term memory does! It's nonsensical, and there's no way that Google could do this that wouldn't already have been caught. I mean is the theory that all Google devices do it and somehow no OEM has realized their microphone is getting accessed? (Because even with the lowest level access on the device, modern microphones are not so unsophisticated, there's no universal way to access it in a way a manufacturer wouldn't catch onto sooner or later Or Google did this but only on phones they own or something? It's nonsense.
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    > You won't find one because it doesn't exist. There is no proof it happens, and no proof it doesn’t happen, because it’s non-trivial to detect based on network activity. The only evidence is observing content relevant to what was being spoken about being suggested across apps. > Risk: Forever break the trust people have in your devices, this isn't some grey area intrusive tracking that would just get swept under the rug... Reward: get people to love your services for relevant suggestions. Believe it or not, there are people outside the extra privacy-conscious bubble who do not at all mind their devices listening. > Or Google did this but only on phones they own or something? I am pretty sure this depends on software. I have seen this demonstrated on a Google-branded phone with a Google app.
    - BoorishBears 6y ago
      > Reward: get people to love your services for relevant suggestions. Believe it or not, there are people outside the extra privacy-conscious bubble who do not at all mind their devices listening. Like I already pointed out this is nonsense. Always on listening even with perfect parsing would INCREDIBLY noisy. There are a million and one reasons for a term to come up in speech. The simplest conversation could surface hundreds of targeting terms. Meanwhile they literally own the device and the services most people use. They have your search, they have your email, they have social graphs. They can literally make inferences before you even think to talk about them with other people! (and we've seen this happen before with things like disease and pregnancy reveals) We're at the point where most people's cell phones hold more personal data than they could even recall on demand. So why on earth would they go and muddy all that easily weighted data with noisy data like everything you say, literally every other form of interaction is already giving them better more concise information about you... - > There is no proof it happens, and no proof it doesn’t happen, because it’s non-trivial to detect based on network activity. The only evidence is observing content relevant to what was being spoken about being suggested across apps. I can't believe people are entertaining this kind of stuff on HN. You make an unreasonable claim... then act like because you yourself can't prove your unreasonable claim it should be entertained? What? That's not how that works. You have no actual proof for your unreasonable claim... then that's it. It ends there. The burden doesn't suddenly fall on others to prove the contrary! Come back with even a modicum of proof. Literally any real proof other than anecdotes where the ad companies who literally have almost all the data in your life anyways are able to come up with topics you're interested in... and maybe someone will entertain this. And no, talking about something and getting an ad for it after is not proof any more than having a leaf fall on your head while you stand under in a mid-autumn forest right after you whispered "gravity" is proof that the forest is listening to your words.