• gcheliotis@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    A market agency claiming they do something of the sort isn’t proof that conversations are being monitored en masse. Security researchers can and probably have tested for this and found no clear, verifiable evidence, otherwise we would have known. Also, this stuff can be blocked at the OS level and I find it hard to imagine (esp. without solid proof) that Google or Apple would jeopardize their reputations to this extent by enabling such unauthorized listening in on users’ conversations.

    Of course it’s good to keep watching this space but we shouldn’t jump to conclusions.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      Anybody that’s ever spoken to a salesperson knows that they’re talking out of their arse most of the time, and I doubt this is an exception.

      He’s said this because he thinks that the people he’s talking to will give him more money if he does.

      If it was happening at all you’d have seen proof by now. Like people pulling apps apart and finding proof, not just “I spoke to Bob last week about cameras and now I’m seeing ads for cameras”.

      The truly terrifying part is they don’t need to listen to your conversations to know what you want.

            • InternetPerson@lemmings.world
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              2 months ago

              The evidence is: among other things, facebook has repeatedly violated user’s privacy. It would be no surprise if they would also monitor conversations via the microphone. Sure, currently there seems to be no evidence for that. But I wouldn’t be so naive to just trust them on that.

                • InternetPerson@lemmings.world
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                  2 months ago

                  This is not evidence that they’re using your microphone, and you know it’s not.

                  I didn’t claim it to be evidence for that.

                  somehow bypassing Google and Apple’s mic usage notifications

                  Unless some form of hardware notification is hardwired into the device, which indicates cam or mic usage, I’m on the rather paranoid side regarding software notifications. Software is usually much easier to break. I’m leaning a lot out of the window now, as I don’t know how secure those notifications are implemented. However, even then there is reason for concern, given that facebook had / has questionable deals with device manufacturers. If they were willing to share personal data with device manufacturers, there is reason to suspect this went or can go the other way around as well.

                  I don’t know why you keep coming back to trust. […] That’s not the point.

                  It is mine. Even though there is no evidence for a surveillance using device microphones itself yet and it could be surprising if they were able to, given the history of facebook, they participated in a lot of rather surprising shit.

      • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        By paying people $20 / month in exchange for installing a VPN that will snoop on your data so they can market research their competitors.

        It is unacceptable, but it wasn’t in secret from the users. They agreed to get paid in exchange for the usage data of competitor apps.

        So it’s a completely different situation to any “secretly spying” claim. The users had to go out of their way to get it setup.

    • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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      2 months ago

      They have it’s very easy there are free programs that monitor all data traffic.

      This claim that Facebook listens to you on your phone has been around for years. It has been investigated numerous times and has never turned out to be true. Until recently the processing capacity required would have been insane and you would have an incredibly high noise to signal ratio. It’s just not an economical way of gathering data for advertising.

      Why bother anyway when people put their entire lives on Facebook, for free, in easily processable text?

      • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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        2 months ago

        Your phone/plan carrier using voice data to make a marketing profile is well documented actually. This data is purchased and verified and resold by meta, or in some cases bought and used by alphabet for GAS. Cacti can show you outgoing data for every device on a network, and you can see data being sent from a phone in signed packets going to your carrier when you’re not “actively using” it. It seems like you know about network monitoring tools but you haven’t actually used them, just talked about them in reference to data collection.

        “Why buy the cow” here is also easily answered: not everyone uses Facebook, a fair number of users will deactivate their facebook page but continue to use messenger.

            • dev_null@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              Yeah, with lots of leaked customer data. Nothing about using voice data to make a marketing profile. Unless there is a second leak I don’t know about.

              But judging by your inability to link it you just made it up.

        • Xatolos@reddthat.com
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          2 months ago

          So what you’re saying is the biggest companies like Amazon, Google, ChatGPT, etc… can’t perfect voice dictation when I’m talking directly and clearly to my device, but this company has been able to figure it out. And doing it while hiding from the smartphone OS that it’s doing it. While the device is at a distance/hidden in my pocket. And is using it just to sell ads.

          👍

              • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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                2 months ago

                I asked because it was nonsensical and could have been funny if you were imitating the typical internet child comment but here we are with you making no sense and me disappointed

                  • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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                    2 months ago

                    Hey! You can’t read after all! Rember when I explicitly posted that you can sniff packets going to your phone provider and not these companies? You have zero reading comprehension and a bad attitude, and it’s obvious you’re more interested in being right than being correct. If googling unrelated drivel articles to a discussion gets you off, you do you I guess

        • Echo Dot@feddit.uk
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          2 months ago

          And you have yet to provide any evidence for your belief.

          I want evidence please provide me evidence or shut the hell up because all you’re doing is perpetuating a prejudice against Facebook, which isn’t unjustified, but is totally without any kind of basis in reality.

      • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        2 months ago

        Because people’s (presumed private) conversations on Messenger are not the same thing as things people post publicly.

        Personally, I would never install that malware on my phone. But if you even have FB Messenger installed on your device, chances are that it’s constantly sending your data to Facebook. Go take a look at what permissions it “needs.”

        • Warl0k3@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          We can see what it’s sending to facebook though, and it’s not constant. There’s a bunch that it does send and receive, but this isn’t hypothetical speculation, like, we can just see that it’s not using your microphone for that, or sending anything like audio data. You can check this yourself, wireshark is free and packet specifications are available.