Your cell phone listens to what you say

Ads often catch us by surprise by showing something you were talking about previously, and this makes us ask ourselves the question “Does the cell phone listen to what you say or talk about?”

According to Dr Peter Hannay – senior security consultant at cybersecurity firm Asterisk, and former lecturer and researcher at Edith Cowan University – the short answer is yes, but perhaps in a way that isn’t as diabolical as it sounds.

So that your smartphone pay attention and record yourself, there needs to be a trigger, like Hey Siri or Okay Google, for example. Without these triggers, there is no recording, with just some general metrics being sent to your service provider. This may not seem like cause for alarm, but when it comes to applications like Facebook, ninguém sabe quais são os gatilhos. De fato, pode haver milhares.

“From time to time, audio snippets are returned to the servers [of other apps like Facebook], but there is no official understanding of what the triggers are,” explains Peter. “Seja no tempo, no local ou no uso de determinadas funções, os [aplicativos] certamente estão obtendo essas permissões de microfone e usando-as periodicamente. Todas as partes internas dos aplicativos enviam esses dados de forma criptografada, por isso é muito difícil definir o gatilho exato.”

He goes on to explain that apps like Facebook or the Instagram can have thousands of triggers. A common conversation with a friend about needing a new pair of jeans can be enough to trigger it. Although the key word here is “could,” because while the technology is there, companies like Facebook vehemently deny listening to our conversations.

In the video below I talk a little about the subject:

When preparing this article, we tested and can prove that some subjects are indeed captured and transformed into advertisements. Do the test at home.