> Based on targeted ads I get, it's pretty clear to me that many (most? all?) apps to I grant microphone access to collect and sell data about me. You would se

> Based on targeted ads I get, it's pretty clear to me that many (most? all?) apps to I grant microphone access to collect and sell data about me. You would see a red bar/dot at the top of your screen indicating a background app has an active audio session with microphone access if this was actually happening. That app would have also had to be previously foregrounded, there isn't a way for an app in the background to just randomly turn the microphone on on iOS and start recording (thankfully), everything needs be requested through audio session which is an intermediary between the app and the OS. iOS aside, people often have this idea that devices are listening to them - not that some particular companies wouldn't like to do that but wouldn't this be insanely expense to do in terms of compute, rendering it a non-starter?