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A while back (I believe May 2020) I did an experiment. I kept a phone in isolation for 3 days and recorded all the network traffic. Then I took the same phone a

A while back (I believe May 2020) I did an experiment. I kept a phone in isolation for 3 days and recorded all the network traffic. Then I took the same phone and put it up against a speaker that played a podcast archive continuously over a 3 day period. Then I did another 3 days of silence and a different archive of podcasts for 3 days. At the end I had 24 days of phone network pcaps (4 sets of 3 days audio + 3 days silence). I made sure that the phone was able to transcribe the audio coming from the speakers when I put the keyboard in dictation mode just to make sure that it could "hear" the conversations from the speaker. I tried hard to find statistical anomalies or pattern differences in the sets but I was unable to extract anything that could yield any type of change detection corresponding to when they happened (silence to podcast or podcast to silence) or anything that could differentiate the content. I had timestamps, hoping to find spikes, say, during commercials where a bunch of brand names get mentioned. There were no such spikes and the traffic was frustratingly uniform and appeared to be completely independent of the experiment I was running. The phone had google assistant, facebook, instagram, tiktok, and snapchat installed among other applications. All the accounts were logged in and I occasionally adb'd over to the device to make sure the applications appeared in memory in a ps list. Now of course, absence of evidence doesn't show evidence of absence and maybe I am just too incompetent to see what's going on but I was unable to find any hard evidence using this method. I of course was really hoping for the opposite and to come forth with some industry shattering announcement, but if there's something there I at least wasn't able to find it in the wire. I encourage others to repeat this and refute my inconclusive results - that'd be great. It's an easy enough experiment to do. Happy hunting.

omeid2 4y ago
It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. Say, you're searching for something while you speak, lo and behold Google Search's suggestion list pops up and is extremely accurate for what I am about to search based on 1 or 2 characters.
- kristopolous 4y ago
  Yes, I thought of that as well but I didn't pursue it. There's ways to MITM the traffic on your own devices if you set up your network and phone right. That'd probably be the next step and then to look into the payload contents (which should be a bit more conclusive). I was just doing flow analysis. Doing that and getting a hard "no" would be valuable. Alternatively if you can catch the hypothesized spying on the wire, fame will be yours.
- voisin 4y ago
  > It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. This isn’t what the popular conspiracy is though. People argue just having their phone with them while they hold normal conversations leads to advertisements later. No app interaction is ever mentioned. I think this experiment is perfect for debunking the conspiracy.
  - omeid2 4y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
whywhywouldyou 4y ago
This was a great experiment. It obviously doesn't rule anything out or confirm anything, but one possibility is that the apps cache this information and only send it out during their regular communication frequency as part of the packet payload. I'm not sure if there's a way to test for this (or if you tried in your experiment)

omeid2 4y ago

It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. Say, you're searching for something while you speak, lo and behold Google Search's suggestion list pops up and is extremely accurate for what I am about to search based on 1 or 2 characters.

kristopolous 4y ago
Yes, I thought of that as well but I didn't pursue it. There's ways to MITM the traffic on your own devices if you set up your network and phone right. That'd probably be the next step and then to look into the payload contents (which should be a bit more conclusive). I was just doing flow analysis. Doing that and getting a hard "no" would be valuable. Alternatively if you can catch the hypothesized spying on the wire, fame will be yours.
voisin 4y ago
> It is possible, at least theoretically, that "keyword scanning" only happens when you interact with the apps. This isn’t what the popular conspiracy is though. People argue just having their phone with them while they hold normal conversations leads to advertisements later. No app interaction is ever mentioned. I think this experiment is perfect for debunking the conspiracy.
- omeid2 4y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

whywhywouldyou 4y ago

This was a great experiment. It obviously doesn't rule anything out or confirm anything, but one possibility is that the apps cache this information and only send it out during their regular communication frequency as part of the packet payload. I'm not sure if there's a way to test for this (or if you tried in your experiment)