(I know many of you already know it but this incident I experienced made me so paranoid about using smartphones)
To start off, I’m not that deep into privacy rabbit hole but I do as much I can possibly to be private on my phone. But for the rest of phones in my family, I generally don’t care because they are not tech savvy and pushing them towards privacy would make their lives hard.
So, the other day I pirated a movie for my family and since it was on Netflix, it was a direct rip with full HD. I was explaining to my family how this looks so good as this is an direct rip off from the Netflix platform, and not a recording of a screening in a cinema hall(camrip). It was a small 2min discussion in my native language with only English words used are record, piracy and Netflix.
Later I walk off and open YouTube, and I see a 2 recommendations pop-up on my homepage, “How to record Netflix shows” & “Why can’t you screen record Netflix”. THE WHAT NOW. I felt insanely insecure as I was sure never in my life I looked this shit up and it was purely based on those words I just spoke 5min back.
I am pretty secure on my device afaik and pretty sure all the listening happened on other devices in my family. Later that day, I went and saw which all apps had microphone access, moved most of them to Ask everytime and disabled Google app which literally has all the permissions enabled.
Overall a scary and saddening experience as this might be happening to almost everyone and made me feel it the journey I took to privacy-focused, all worth it.
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No, they don’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4
Again, no, they don’t: https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
If you don’t trust a 4 minute YouTube video or an independent (?) study, try a Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/comment/hfhynid/
I will watch these later. But recently one of the Facebook’s employee’s chat was leaked saying they listen to customer mics 24/7 via a third party. Google blocked the alleged third party and Facebook has ended ties with them too.
What about it?
It was an ad partner’s pitch deck, not much to do with Facebook itself. And it didn’t really explain how it would be listening anyway.
Besides, if they were recording, processing and / or transferring audio, that would mean there’s data usage, battery usage, etc - stuff that’s easy to prove.
The truth is a lot simpler (and scarier) and you will find that in the links I provided.
I have videos that prove the opposite so like idk
If they actually prove something, I’d be happy to give them a watch. 40 minutes of some dudebro’s podcast with a phone in his hands doesn’t count
Hey, looks like you forgot to post them so we’ll ignore your comment for now until you do!
Listen, mister/miss. I tried it once and the reaction was bad because geopolitical reasons. Do I want to get banned by admin abuse? No. Do I want to start a political fight in a nice thread? Also no.
The youtube algorithm determined the following: people who watch the kind of videos in your history, are also interested in recording netflix shows. And it was right, because you are in fact interested in that (general) topic. This is another possible explanation.
First off, if you’re concerned about phone privacy, consider a custom OS for your phone that respects privacy such as GrapheneOS.
It’s easy to figure out that your device isn’t listening to a constant audio stream 24/7, since that would drain battery and send a lot of noticeable data over the network. However, it is entirely possible to listen for certain keywords as you mentioned, and send them encrypted with another seemingly legitimate packet. There’s no way to be 100% certain, but it is possible in theory without draining too much battery.
The steps you took are good, making sure that apps don’t have any permissions they don’t need. Privacy is a spectrum, so it’s not “all or nothing”. As I mentioned before, if you’re seriously concerned about mobile privacy and want a solution, you can get a custom operating system that can remove any privacy invasive elements. GrapheneOS also allows you to disable the camera and microphone system-wide (although this functionality is present on some other Android builds).
If it eases you any, a lot of these advertisements happen to be coincidence and trigger confirmation bias. It could be that those ads happened to show up by coincidence, or that advertisers managed predicted your interests, or that you got tracked by some other means while downloading the movie. The possibilities are nearly endless.
You should install Rethink and see how much garbage your phone constantly transmits and receives. And this is not even a kernel-level firewall, so who knows how much data Google actually exfiltrates…
I don’t know about a constant audio stream, nor about keywords, but I noticed that Google Keyboard sends out some data every time you type anything. It’s not even that subtle.
If anything, I love GrapheneOS for its “Network” permission toggle. It’s nice knowing that my keyboard (or any other unnecessary apps) can’t phone home.
GrapheneOS is certainly on my wishlist too, but Pixels are quite pricey. I guess Rethink is the poor man’s version. Just a per-app firewall.
This may be a simple coincidence. Maybe you had similar YouTube suggestions in the past but you didn’t pay attention because they come at random times. Like if you drive a Honda Civic, you tend to spot all the Honda Civic in the street.
There would be an interesting experiment to make though:
- Take a snapshot of your YouTube recommandations
- Choose a subject that has nothing to do with any of the recommandations, let’s say “travel to the Bahamas”
- Hold a conversation with someone with both your phone’s present, mention several time going to the Bahamas.
- Check YouTube again, si if the topic of Bahamas is appearing.
- Choose another topic not covered by your recommendations, let’s say collecting stamps
- Put your phones away, have a conversation about collecting stamps
- Check YouTube recommandations
I’ll second the recommendation for GrapheneOS. One of the available options I use is to keep mic, camera, and location off at all times until I need them. That simple toggle ability changes your privacy stance greatly.
That’s Google for you, mister/miss.
Don’t get things for free! Ever! The producers aren’t rich enough yet to pay the artists a living wage for their creative work. Homeland will extra-judicially use weapon systems on you even if you don’t pirate because all it takes is false accusation and then you will be tortured and never allowed to reproduce anywhere in the US sphere of influence (or TPP or UN).
