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posted by janrinok on Friday September 06 2019, @02:09PM   Printer-friendly
from the Didn't-Search-Deep-Enough dept.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-49585682

A recent study has "proven" that Android and Apple phones do not eavesdrop on conversations.

A mobile security company has carried out a research investigation to address the popular conspiracy theory that tech giants are listening to conversations.

The internet is awash with posts and videos on social media where people claim to have proof that the likes of Facebook and Google are spying on users in order to serve hyper-targeted adverts. Videos have gone viral in recent months showing people talking about products and then ads for those exact items appear online.

Now, cyber security-specialists at Wandera have emulated the online experiments and found no evidence that phones or apps were secretly listening.

I think this is the classic can't prove a counterfactual thing, ("we've proved that no birds swim from this survey of life in a nearby park"). However, I thought this would be an interesting article, and possibly start some good conversation... if nothing else, due to poking potential holes in their experimental techniques and data analysis:

Researchers put two phones - one Samsung Android phone and one Apple iPhone - into a "audio room". For 30 minutes they played the sound of cat and dog food adverts on loop. They also put two identical phones in a silent room.

The security specialists kept apps open for Facebook, Instagram, Chrome, SnapChat, YouTube, and Amazon with full permissions granted to each platform.

They then looked for ads related to pet food on each platform and webpage they subsequently visited. They also analysed the battery usage and data consumption on the phones during the test phase.

They repeated the experiment at the same time for three days, and noted no relevant pet food adverts on the "audio room" phones and no significant spike in data or battery usage.

The activity seen on phones in the "audio room" and the silent rooms were similar. They did record data being transferred from the devices - but it was at low levels and nowhere near the quantity seen when virtual assistants like Siri or Hey Google are active.

James Mack, systems engineer at Wandera, said: "We observed that the data from our tests is much lower than the virtual assistant data over the 30-minute time period, which suggests that the constant recording of conversations and uploading to the cloud is not happening on any of these tested apps.


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  • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday September 07 2019, @09:32PM (7 children)

    by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday September 07 2019, @09:32PM (#891086) Homepage

    You're fallaciously equating mass personalization with passive eavesdropping.

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  • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Saturday September 07 2019, @10:29PM (6 children)

    by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Saturday September 07 2019, @10:29PM (#891098) Homepage Journal

    Google is the one who equated mass personalization with passive eavesdropping by saying that they would use passive eavesdropping to implement it. Here I found the link to the interview with Peter Norvig, director of research at Google in 2006 talking about the technology I mentioned here [technologyreview.com].

    Google research director Peter Norvig predicts that the prototype, which uses an audio identification technique invented outside Google and applied to a uniquely large database of recorded sound, will eventually evolve into a product. And it’s attracted plenty of attention from technology watchers, who see a big potential payoff for Google and other companies if a system for bridging TV and Web content can be made practical. For now, though, it’s still an early-stage research project.

    “We weren’t really pitching an application that we want to do here and now, but rather a concept,” says Michael Fink, lead researcher on the project. Fink works at the Interdisciplinary Center for Neural Computation at Hebrew University in Jerusalem and is spending the summer at Google. “We wanted to open people’s minds to the possibility of using ambient audio as a medium for querying web content,” he says.

    I don't really see how much more Google could express their desire to engage in passive eavesdropping more than explaining that they are going to do it.

    • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday September 07 2019, @11:39PM (5 children)

      by darkfeline (1030) on Saturday September 07 2019, @11:39PM (#891114) Homepage

      I suggest you look up the definitions of the words "predict", "prototype", "early-stage", "research", "weren't", "concept", and generally actually read the words that you've quoted there.

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      • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Sunday September 08 2019, @12:49PM (4 children)

        by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Sunday September 08 2019, @12:49PM (#891267) Homepage Journal

        You are the one glossing over words - I should have set some of them in bold perhaps. Did you bother to read the article as hyperlinked?

        We weren’t really pitching an application that we want to do here and now, but rather a concept,

        Ok

        We wanted to open people’s minds to the possibility of using ambient audio as a medium for querying web content

        I see.

        will eventually evolve into a product.

        Oh. But it's only been 13 years. That isn't enough time to get this refined and out into the public. Nope definitely Google isn't doing this and there wasn't ever any intention stated to do so.

        Your zombie analogy is failing because Google has plans for zombies, worked on zombie technology, and said they expect to use zombies.

        • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday September 08 2019, @08:58PM (3 children)

          by darkfeline (1030) on Sunday September 08 2019, @08:58PM (#891396) Homepage

          You conveniently omitted the "research director predicts...". Of course the research director would predict some application for research. There isn't any researcher who would brag that their research has no practical applications over the inverse.

          In case you didn't know, research teams do not guide the development of products, merely do research which may then be incorporated into products--or not.

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          • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Monday September 09 2019, @03:42AM (2 children)

            by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Monday September 09 2019, @03:42AM (#891528) Homepage Journal

            What are you asserting? Presumably you aren't just arguing - there is a purpose here right? Are you asserting that Google is not engaging in this kind of surveillance? Are you asserting there is insufficient evidence?

            My assertions were that Google has the technology to engage in the surveillance people are anecdotally reporting and that they stated they will use the technology. Turns out they stated they intend to use the technology - that's not an important enough difference for me.

            My question was "why should I believe Google isn't doing this?" - the answer seems to be "because Google might not use technology they invested in 13 years ago regardless of how amazingly lucrative the idea is or how much they demonstrated they don't have issues with surveillance."

            • (Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday September 09 2019, @07:40AM (1 child)

              by darkfeline (1030) on Monday September 09 2019, @07:40AM (#891576) Homepage

              > they stated they will use the technology. Turns out they stated they intend to use the technology

              No they didn't. A research director stated that they predicted that an early stage research concept may have applications, and the statement was not made on behalf of the company as a whole.

              > What are you asserting?

              I'm challenging your unsubstantiated claim with the intent to incite FUD and/or emotional reaction. I believe the contemporary vernacular is "fake news".

              You stated in your initial post:

              > Google already told us they would listen to every microphone and use it for advertising.

              And the evidence you mustered to back this claim is one researcher predicting the application of an early-stage research concept.

              While this kind of bullshit is now common in most news media, I will challenge it here on SN. If you have actual evidence to back up your claim, I'd like to see it.

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              • (Score: 2) by Knowledge Troll on Monday September 09 2019, @02:02PM

                by Knowledge Troll (5948) on Monday September 09 2019, @02:02PM (#891681) Homepage Journal

                While this kind of bullshit is now common in most news media, I will challenge it here on SN. If you have actual evidence to back up your claim, I'd like to see it.

                Oh that's why you are being such a fucking asshole - you feel personally vindicated because you believe someone else is doing something you don't agree with by jumping to conclusions. Ah ha.

                If you would like the larger story try reading this journal entry: Hypothesis: Google is using ambient audio for targetting ads [soylentnews.org]

                Fuck you very much too.