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I don't buy this. I was at a social outing some years back at pub that I had been to a number of times before with some longtime friends of mine. Somehow we go

by dolni 5y ago

I don't buy this. I was at a social outing some years back at pub that I had been to a number of times before with some longtime friends of mine. Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads. I hadn't had one of those in two decades, and certainly hadn't seen any ads for them in a long time. But still, the very next day, I was getting ads for them on social media. Everyone I have ever asked about it has a similar story. You could whip up some kind of explanation that a friend of mine searched Warheads later. Or maybe a nearby bar patron overheard the conversation and searched for the candies. That just seems so unlikely, though. It was a miniscule detail in a larger conversation. But in terms of retail products discussed, it was one of only a few.

shukantpal 5y ago
Does it happen regularly?
smackeyacky 5y ago
Given the incredibly poor search results I get from Google Assistant I find the idea that the old Samsung phone is listening to my every word is plausible but should be extremely ineffective since when I am deliberately using it, it sucks. However, if I am half way through a movie and I want to find some detail on it, it inevitably shows up within the first few search results whether I'm watching it on DVD, a blu-ray or off a streaming service or broadcast TV. The streaming service I can understand, Blu-ray player could be talking to something I guess, the other two are harder to explain since I use an old DVD player that has no networking facility.
- psadri 5y ago
  Maybe it’s just playing dumb?
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    Ha. Voice recognition does seem to induce a large amount of anthropomorphism.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Is your TV internet connected? Some have content fingerprinting technology to determine what you're watching shares that back to the ad networks.
  - smackeyacky 5y ago
    No, its an ancient panasonic with no network connection either. The other thing I didn't count was that google probably know I search for movie information regularly and bias the search results accordingly, which is more plausible than it knowing what movie I am watching by listening to it. But maybe they have something like that "what am i listening to" feature that used to be in google play music. I guess we unintionally might be triggering a pile of information side channels without the voice recognition spying being foremost.
eightysixfour 5y ago
The chain of things that has to happen for this to work is implausible: 1. The device has to record the things used by the always on mics listening for wake words somewhere, without any other developers figuring this out and sharing how it is done. 2. Apps, using a background task, have to monitor those recordings, run speech recognition, and pick out key words, without anyone identifying this process. 3. The apps then have send those keywords back to the ad network, without anyone ever sniffing the network traffic and seeing this process. Other methods are similarly implausible, for example it is unlikely the ad networks would be able to get the audio off of the device for cloud (instead of local recognition) without researchers noticing. The only method that I buy for this is that open apps have a way to turn on the mic without the OS notification that the mic is on and share it while the app is open. This is still pretty unlikely (would not be hard to sniff for example), but more than the other options at least.
- bryans 5y ago
  That's not how any of these things work, at all. Much in the same way that Facebook and WhatsApp already hash direct messages and compare them to hashes of ad key phrases known to be effective, both audio and video can be hashed at the device level and sent as comparatively small strings, rather than large buffers of media. This can happen while the device is offline, and they can be easily sent along with routine data, which wouldn't even look out of place. Speech recognition doesn't even need to enter the equation at any point.
  - eightysixfour 5y ago
    Using some sort of hash instead of transcribing the speech doesn’t change any of the things I listed that make this implausible. There would need to be a background service that has access to the mic without using the official APIs (which show a mic notification) that somehow no one has been able to find for the 5+ years that people have been claiming this is happening. The truth for all of these is probably that we are boring and predictable combined with some version of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
    - 5y ago
creato 5y ago
For how many topics and spoken words does this not happen for? You probably can't count them. I don't think this happens because I don't think it's technically feasible. The hotword detection stuff that is always on ("hey siri", "ok google") is incredibly limited in vocabulary. Maybe one day that will change, maybe it's even possible now, but people have been telling stories like yours since well before I know for sure it was technically infeasible to do it.
randycupertino 5y ago
Ha, I remember Warheads! Those were good. Yeah, I've had one of those happen to me where it was just uncanny if it wasn't listening. I walked into work and my coworker was sitting there working and asked how I was. As I put down my stuff and was taking my lunch out of my backpack I was like, "I'm good, but my backpack zipper just broke!" When I logged into facebook ~30 minutes later I had ads for backpack zippers. It was downright unsettling and I actually deleted facebook app from my phone over it. I still remember that unnerving feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the ad, as I never got any ads like that previously. I definitely was one of those people who thought the "your phone is listening" stuff was paranoia, but that made me at least reconsider if not agree.
dehrmann 5y ago
Could also be selection or confirmation bias. Think about all those times you said a marketable term but didn't see an ad.
wvenable 5y ago
Or you get hundreds of ads every day and pay no attention to them at all unless they coincidentally correspond to something you were thinking about recently.
jodrellblank 5y ago
> "Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads." Are you sure you don't have cause and effect backwards, and the "somehow" was actually one of you seeing an advert for Warheads earlier because they'd started advertising more in general or more at your group's demographic, then they were near in mind to talk about, then the ads were more noticable?
tylermenezes 5y ago
I had this with Elder Law ads, after I started watching Better Call Saul. I was watching it as MP4s I'd pirated /years/ ago, on VLC, on a computer running Arch Linux. I have lots of examples that I can hand-wave away as interest profiles, but I've thought about this one since and just have absolutely no idea how it would happen. If someone could explain how this happened without using the mic, I'd be really interested. Better Call Saul hadn't touched my browsing history for years, and elder law never had at all.
- eurasiantiger 5y ago
  Your phone picked up on the theme.
throwawayboise 5y ago
> You could whip up some kind of explanation that a friend of mine searched Warheads later. I think that really is the most likely explanation. Facebook and Google knows who your friends are, and if a friend is interested in Warheads, maybe you are too. So you start seeing ads.

by dolni 5y ago

shukantpal 5y ago

Does it happen regularly?

smackeyacky 5y ago

Given the incredibly poor search results I get from Google Assistant I find the idea that the old Samsung phone is listening to my every word is plausible but should be extremely ineffective since when I am deliberately using it, it sucks. However, if I am half way through a movie and I want to find some detail on it, it inevitably shows up within the first few search results whether I'm watching it on DVD, a blu-ray or off a streaming service or broadcast TV. The streaming service I can understand, Blu-ray player could be talking to something I guess, the other two are harder to explain since I use an old DVD player that has no networking facility.

psadri 5y ago
Maybe it’s just playing dumb?
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  Ha. Voice recognition does seem to induce a large amount of anthropomorphism.
eightysixfour 5y ago
Is your TV internet connected? Some have content fingerprinting technology to determine what you're watching shares that back to the ad networks.
- smackeyacky 5y ago
  No, its an ancient panasonic with no network connection either. The other thing I didn't count was that google probably know I search for movie information regularly and bias the search results accordingly, which is more plausible than it knowing what movie I am watching by listening to it. But maybe they have something like that "what am i listening to" feature that used to be in google play music. I guess we unintionally might be triggering a pile of information side channels without the voice recognition spying being foremost.

eightysixfour 5y ago

The chain of things that has to happen for this to work is implausible: 1. The device has to record the things used by the always on mics listening for wake words somewhere, without any other developers figuring this out and sharing how it is done. 2. Apps, using a background task, have to monitor those recordings, run speech recognition, and pick out key words, without anyone identifying this process. 3. The apps then have send those keywords back to the ad network, without anyone ever sniffing the network traffic and seeing this process. Other methods are similarly implausible, for example it is unlikely the ad networks would be able to get the audio off of the device for cloud (instead of local recognition) without researchers noticing. The only method that I buy for this is that open apps have a way to turn on the mic without the OS notification that the mic is on and share it while the app is open. This is still pretty unlikely (would not be hard to sniff for example), but more than the other options at least.

bryans 5y ago
That's not how any of these things work, at all. Much in the same way that Facebook and WhatsApp already hash direct messages and compare them to hashes of ad key phrases known to be effective, both audio and video can be hashed at the device level and sent as comparatively small strings, rather than large buffers of media. This can happen while the device is offline, and they can be easily sent along with routine data, which wouldn't even look out of place. Speech recognition doesn't even need to enter the equation at any point.
- eightysixfour 5y ago
  Using some sort of hash instead of transcribing the speech doesn’t change any of the things I listed that make this implausible. There would need to be a background service that has access to the mic without using the official APIs (which show a mic notification) that somehow no one has been able to find for the 5+ years that people have been claiming this is happening. The truth for all of these is probably that we are boring and predictable combined with some version of the Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon.
  - 5y ago

creato 5y ago

For how many topics and spoken words does this not happen for? You probably can't count them. I don't think this happens because I don't think it's technically feasible. The hotword detection stuff that is always on ("hey siri", "ok google") is incredibly limited in vocabulary. Maybe one day that will change, maybe it's even possible now, but people have been telling stories like yours since well before I know for sure it was technically infeasible to do it.

randycupertino 5y ago

Ha, I remember Warheads! Those were good. Yeah, I've had one of those happen to me where it was just uncanny if it wasn't listening. I walked into work and my coworker was sitting there working and asked how I was. As I put down my stuff and was taking my lunch out of my backpack I was like, "I'm good, but my backpack zipper just broke!" When I logged into facebook ~30 minutes later I had ads for backpack zippers. It was downright unsettling and I actually deleted facebook app from my phone over it. I still remember that unnerving feeling in the pit of my stomach when I saw the ad, as I never got any ads like that previously. I definitely was one of those people who thought the "your phone is listening" stuff was paranoia, but that made me at least reconsider if not agree.

dehrmann 5y ago

Could also be selection or confirmation bias. Think about all those times you said a marketable term but didn't see an ad.

wvenable 5y ago

Or you get hundreds of ads every day and pay no attention to them at all unless they coincidentally correspond to something you were thinking about recently.

jodrellblank 5y ago

> "Somehow we got on the topic of favorite candies from childhood. I mentioned Warheads." Are you sure you don't have cause and effect backwards, and the "somehow" was actually one of you seeing an advert for Warheads earlier because they'd started advertising more in general or more at your group's demographic, then they were near in mind to talk about, then the ads were more noticable?

tylermenezes 5y ago

I had this with Elder Law ads, after I started watching Better Call Saul. I was watching it as MP4s I'd pirated /years/ ago, on VLC, on a computer running Arch Linux. I have lots of examples that I can hand-wave away as interest profiles, but I've thought about this one since and just have absolutely no idea how it would happen. If someone could explain how this happened without using the mic, I'd be really interested. Better Call Saul hadn't touched my browsing history for years, and elder law never had at all.

eurasiantiger 5y ago
Your phone picked up on the theme.

throwawayboise 5y ago

> You could whip up some kind of explanation that a friend of mine searched Warheads later. I think that really is the most likely explanation. Facebook and Google knows who your friends are, and if a friend is interested in Warheads, maybe you are too. So you start seeing ads.