Well I would guess its an app. Spend some money and make a pretty, shiny or even actually useful app. Market it. Get people to download and install it (possi

Well I would guess its an app. Spend some money and make a pretty, shiny or even actually useful app. Market it. Get people to download and install it (possibly for free), and ask for permission to access the microphone. If this is the case I'm not sure what the fb/google/az connection would be. Perhaps, they could be buying the resulting data. It would sort of makes sense if you installed a voice-note taking app and it asked for access to the microphone. However, when you are not using that app - is it still using the microphone? Who knows? I do get somewhat irritated with Android's inability to report which apps are doing what at any particular moment.