This is all too simplistically true, yes WiFi signals can be used to map rooms and homes and detect bodies, but to actually to this in your own home takes a whole lot of technical knowhow and then to do this in someone else’s home is a whole different level of expertise.
And I never understood the “your phone in always recording you” argument, how can this type of recording put no strain on the phones computation, battery or data usage, but recording using voice memo for an hour or scrolling Reddit for a long while drains a significant chunk.
Constant surveillance of every phone in the world is just too much data to handle for any nefarious corporate or governmental entity. It’s just not very efficient. It much easier and more efficient to track the actions you take while browsing the web and predicting patterns from that, that data can all fit in lightweight text format.
Simple occupied/vacant detection is much easier than tracking you as you move through the house. And useful, why not save energy by turning down/off the HVAC when you’re away?
If you have an iPhone, it is constantly listening for "Hey Siri". I literally records every single second of the day it's turned on, it just deletes the buffer after like 3 seconds though. But it is listening all of the time, otherwise that feature wouldn't be possible.
A dedicated circuit that listens to a specific keyword locally is very different from recording what you say and sending it for targeted advertising, which is the thing people commonly claim their phone is doing when it's just the Baader-Meinhoff phenomenon.
Facebook is 100% listening. There’s been countless lawsuits about. Apple (and Google has too) just lost a lawsuit because the “hey siri” thing “was totally not listening 24/7, and was toooootally deleting everything”… oh wait no it wasn’t.
Facebook gets away with it because it’s in the TOS that they can use your mic and then serve you targeted ads. Same with most other companies. They give a super vague and blanket tos that technically lets them do what ever they want to. Sure it’s technically illegal but a fine is just the cost of doing business in most cases.
You have a link? I know they recently busted LG TVs for doing this, but AFAIK everytime people have checked smartphones and home assistants it matches the "it's always recording a small buffer, but only records a big chunk and sends it off if you say the activation word"
Technically sure, but it only listens for the “Hey Siri” prompt, and have no processing capability to do anything else, after prompt is triggered it starts the more process heavy task of actually analyzing what you are saying.
It just doesn’t make sense that our phones are constantly listening and converting everything we do day to day into data. I mean you know yourself how inaccurate Siri is at understanding you, and that is at full processing power, how would a phone be able to convert that much auditory information into data without using heavy processing at the same time?
I've listened to a lot of music through YouTube music. Thousands of hours whilst driving. The other day a friend mentioned a band I had never heard of before. That same evening whilst driving home from work there was a song from that band for the second song in my randomised playlist. That's not counting many other coincidences that have happened throughout my life time. I've literally never heard of this band and it's never been a song in my playlists before. It's not a new band either, the were popular in the 90s only. I'm not sure how to explain it to be honest.
they already tested and proved this, they took a completely fresh phone and connected it to a power cable, left recordings of umbrella commercials on next to it 24/7 for a week. used the phone to set up a Facebook account, every single ad was for umbrellas
as an FYI you can turn that feature off. i always lock down my phone and prevent any apps from using my mic unless in specific circumstances and don't really get the creepy, hyperspecific ads i have seen my friends get
> and then to do this in someone else’s home is a whole different level of expertise.
no hate, but i would feel safe in assuming the several billion dollar companies can get some people with some expertise in
also, we've been optimizing phones since they were first thought of. hell, voyager 1 has no way to recharge and its been going for 50 years. the tech used every second of every day has had a lot of developments :b Siri requires your phone to record every single second its turned on.
Meta (and tons of others) have shown its profitable to use data from your phone, so im sure they wouldn't if the data usage would be an issue.
Devices listen to keywords, but they are not recording what you say and using it for advertising, until you say that keyword. You can talk about your favorite food till you’re blue in the face with your phone on the table, and none of that will ever be sent to any advertiser or company. It would take 5 seconds to figure out if a device is recording you and what data it’s sending out, this stuff would be spotted day 1 of release.
That’s ignoring how huge of a battery drain that would be on phones, and how much data would need to be sent over your customers network, or processed beforehand reducing the total amount of data and again destroying your battery and performance.
i have a qualm about the battery draining problem of recording audio. i had a pixel 2, then now playing feature ( always on display showing what song playing in background) was a super nice feature. it literally drained no significant battery when kept on.
And you really do believe that, if you were a hot enough target, whoever organization trying to do surveillance on you wouldn't have access to such skilled people?
LG tried to store voice recordings on a fucking TV and got busted with specific technical evidence. Phone apps and OSes are under a lot of scrutiny, constant background recording (outside of activation word detection when a voice assistant is enabled and set to always-on) would be discovered and published already.
Midcontinent, a Midwest US ISP, made me download an app that did all of that, and that was 4 years ago.
The smaller ISPs have to work with the 2-3 companies that run the US internet backbones, and there's a lot of data harvesting along the way.
Server racks can handle a lot more data than you would think. They have multiple CPUs, terabytes/petabytes of storage options, and a lot of RAM to help process that data.
do you not understand that scrolling reddit or recording using voice memo generally means your screen is on which is what drains the battery the most? a simple listening program isn't going to drain your battery like you think it will.
I was entirely with you until you said "its just too much data to handle", because that is absolutely not the limiting factor. Storing endless amounts of data has never been cheaper or easier, and there really is no limit to how much (even if its basically useless).
The fact of the matter is that one, there is no overarching agency with perfect access to all this data (besides maybe the FBI or NSA; could argue that back and forth all day till the cows come home), and furthermore there just is no reason to maintain that kind of tracking on the average person. It can't be used to sells ads cost-effectively, so nobody is particularly interested in it except global governments (and again, even then its hard for them to have total access to everything).
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u/AldrousKafka 7h ago
This is all too simplistically true, yes WiFi signals can be used to map rooms and homes and detect bodies, but to actually to this in your own home takes a whole lot of technical knowhow and then to do this in someone else’s home is a whole different level of expertise.
And I never understood the “your phone in always recording you” argument, how can this type of recording put no strain on the phones computation, battery or data usage, but recording using voice memo for an hour or scrolling Reddit for a long while drains a significant chunk.
Constant surveillance of every phone in the world is just too much data to handle for any nefarious corporate or governmental entity. It’s just not very efficient. It much easier and more efficient to track the actions you take while browsing the web and predicting patterns from that, that data can all fit in lightweight text format.