this post was submitted on 30 Oct 2024
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Privacy

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Our phones DO listen to our voices 24x7 (lemmy.world)
submitted 6 days ago by zerozaku@lemmy.world to c/privacy@lemmy.ml
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(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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[–] Broken@lemmy.ml 4 points 6 days ago

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.

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (10 children)

Root your phone and degoogle it if it doesn't have LineageOS image. If it does have LineageOS image, then flash it. Oh, and don't use Google and YouTube. Use Brave/Vivaldi for web search and Tubular for YouTube.

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Bruh Brave or Vivaldi? Those are not even the best options out there

[–] DieserTypMatthias@lemmy.ml 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Or anything else that isn't Google Chrome.

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[–] GatoEscobar@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 6 days ago

Same thing with microwaves

Food is ready and get a video for "why do microwaves hmm?"

[–] bamboo@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 6 days ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEo7FGkmRx0

[–] Lojcs@lemm.ee 1 points 6 days ago

These kinds of things never happen to me, could it be because I have all the tracking stuff disabled?? /s

[–] ganymede@lemmy.ml -3 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Anyone saying they know for 100% certain it's not happening is probably speaking from their emotional desire for it not to be true - rather than actual fact.

Anyone who has looked into the actual technical aspects, rather than spouting the usual surface-level "tech facts" or parroting headlines (rather than the actual academic findings), cannot seriously claim to know for certain its 100% not happening.

@op i would advise caution on stating '24x7' until there is evidence of that specific claim. (unless you're referring to while voice assistants are enabled.)

[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world -1 points 5 days ago (2 children)

I am surprised by the response I got from majority here. I thought the people who are privacy-focused, wouldn't give the benefit of doubt to Google of all companies. But it isn't the case here. Everyone here just assumes and believes strongly it isn't technically not possible which is really the case when you look at the other services offered by Google.

@op i would advise caution on stating '24x7' until there is evidence of that specific claim. (unless you're referring to while voice assistants are enabled.)

Google app which is pre-installed is pretty a forced voice assistant on everyone on android.

[–] N0x0n@lemmy.ml -3 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (2 children)

I get your feeling :) Don't worry the silent majority is on your side. However they won't comment because they fear from being banned or backslashed....

While It can't be proven or disapproved, I also had my share of strange coincidence where my mind goes "Huh? How is that even possible?"... Kinda strange feeling! But that feeling gave me the push to the privacy route maybe in a rather to extreme direction? Always follow your guts when there's to much noise to make a clear decision.

  • RethinkDNS (block every in/out request except those manually allowed)
  • Degoogles android (Shizuku+canta, magisk, debloater)
  • Only open source apps and delete everything else (no exceptions here) -....

You will never get full 100% privacy or anonymity, however you can make your data as much as difficult to get and waste some of their resource and time :).

Good luck !

[–] breakingcups@lemmy.world 0 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Looks like the silent majority disagrees with you... Stop convincing yourself of things that aren't true.

[–] ganymede@lemmy.ml 0 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

cos the majority in this thread cannot even read the articles they cite mistakenly thinking it supports their unscientific claims that this topic is decided.

afaict no researcher has formally claimed a full coverage binary analysis.

if you know of such a study please link?

afaict the researchers are very upfront about the limits to the coverage of their studies and the importance of that uncovered ground being covered.

when the researchers themselves are saying the work isn't over. why are all the super geniuses in this thread so smugly announcing this topic is wrapped up?

i guess they know better than the actual researchers do. amazing, someone should tell them not to worry cos the geniuses in the forums have it all worked out 🤣

[if you're unable to reply with a direct excerpt from actual formally issued research (not some pop media headline) i will not bother responding]

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[–] zerozaku@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago

Thank you, will consider these options.

[–] ganymede@lemmy.ml -1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

yeah the level of technical competence on this site has plummeted since the influx of the reddit crowd.

just enough consumer tech enthusiast knowledge to delude themselves they can smugly and self righteously shit on the average non-tech person.

and now they're the majority, drowning out legitimate curiosity by loudly parroting headlines from articles they didn't even read. slowly turning lemmy into the regurgitated reddit pop media shithole they wanted to escape.

this topic is especially difficult because of the clear emotional desire for it not to be true. hence the degree of fragile cope in this thread.

thankfully not everyone here is a lost cause, and you've been given some good advice on delineating the other possible causes for what you've observed. when we do a careful analysis we must ofc consider all possibilities.

what i've not seen properly acknowledged in this thread, however, is that the possibility of alternative explanations doesn't preclude the possibility of voice-based surveillance either.

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[–] TheFriar@lemm.ee -1 points 6 days ago

Yup. I was driving in the car with a few people for work. We were talking about a music video a couple of us had worked on, and we were explaining who daddy yankee/bad bunny was, and we mentioned daddy yankee did the song “gasolina.”

We live in the US, the conversation was in English, but fuck if “estacion de gasolina” didn’t show up on our route.

[–] GolfNovemberUniform@lemmy.ml -4 points 6 days ago

That's Google for you, mister/miss.

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