Found this one today - Is GOOGLE (physically) listening to you as you talk? I can't say that this isn't a setup by the fellow that posted the YT video - however...on the face of it, it fits nicely with all the "Siri/Alexa work for the CIA" memes and stuff also found on the web... The recent Facebook patent brouhaha doesn't help. I do know for a fact that tracking cookies will, fairly quickly, generate targeted ads. Can't say that this GOOGLE thing has happened to me as I don't have either a camera or mike attached to the PC. Ever. Q to the hive mind: Has this happened to you -ie talking about an item - then having the ads show up without having searched for that item? Assuming that you have a mike attached to and/or activated your computer/tablet. I am curious -- given the sheer amount of 'pranks' flooding across the web
Yes. I have had obscure things I spoke about in conversation come up in ads on my phone, as well as become recommendations on my search engine and spell check. "Red Wattle" is an example that's recently occurred.
You need not be on the phone (well, I cannot say that with 100% accuracy, my cell phone is backup for the wired phone and thus far has seen ONE test call made) but I can say that searching the web on things can produce a slew of ads related to the thing you were searching for. Can't say it makes me happy. All in all, it's one reason the cell phone gets no use since the test call.
This has happened to my wife and I on numerous occasions. As a test we have used pen and paper, away from the phones and computers, to decide on a topic with specific words, activities, products or locations. All of it very, VERY intentional and coming up with something we have never openly discussed or searched for...ever. We've come up with some outlandish and odd things. We then had a fairly staged conversation around the phones. She is on facebook, I am not. This was done around the PHONES and not the computer (the computer was off and in another room and in one case inside while we were outside. Within a matter of minutes (less than a minute in one instance) she had sponsored content relating to the thing we had discussed, both on her phone (iPhone) and the family computer when she logged into FaceBook (without having opened the app on her phone). They are listening, all the time, 100% of the time, without exception if the device is physically capable. Short of physically disconnecting the mic or destroying it (by shoving something through the diaphram if it has one), the phone is listening. "Turning off" the microphone is no longer a guarantee that it is "disabled". I know at least one person will chime in that you can do it on their brand of hardware/software combination and if it makes them feel better to think that, more power to them, but they are wrong. The best you can do is block all traffic to destinations you don't control or approve at the firewall, but then God help you if you EVER connect the device to an open network (4G/McDonald's WiFi/Plane WiFi, etc.). There are applications that use end-to-end encryption, which is fantastic...right up until the underlying software is compromised (by any definition...intentionally by the creator or done by some other actor). Sure, your communication over FaceTime or iMessage is encrypted from device to device for that conversation...but if the device has a back door built in (and I don't believe google for Android, Microsoft for Windows Phone or Apple for IOS...I sincerely believe the capability is there if not already always open/on), the conversation can also be duplicated/replicated and sent via an alternate stream or stored until it can be retrieved. Google has said the device isn't listening "until you say 'Okay Google'." If that is the case...please explain to me how it heard you say "Okay Google". It's listening. Okay, but it's not recording, right? Wrong. My son (16 years old but we discovered this when he was 12) logged into google (because you have to have a google account for your Android phone) to see what had been recorded. He found over 1,000 recordings made from his phone and stored on Google servers...as a 12 year old (in DIRECT violation of the law). His account was created correctly and flagged as a minor (and I had access to it)...we didn't do anything incorrect so they had NO out. Those recordings were ALL from his phone, and NONE of them had been triggered by "Okay Google", not one. Some were muffled as it was in his pocket. Some were fairly clear and included other people from school. Some had other family members who were in the car at the time. Most were 1-3 seconds long. None of them were disclosed (we had to look) and not once did the phone make any type of noise or alert in any way that it was recording. Oh, and we had disabled the microphone in software, which was clearly an effective means of preventing recordings from being made. Apple isn't on your side. Google isn't on your side. Microsoft isn't on your side. Amazon isn't on your side. Samsung, Vizio, GE, JVC and all the others who make "Smart" TVs aren't on your side. But they aren't invading your privacy if you invite them into your home and hook them up to your network...for convenience. Try it yourself. Do what my wife and I did. Go outside with a pad of paper and a pen or pencil and leave all the tech in the house. Close the door. Decide on a conversation about something you have NEVER SAID ONE WORD ABOUT around technology. Yes, I'm sure you can come up with something. Discuss needing a divorce lawyer, talk about the need for infertility treatments or a vasectomy, discuss a video game nobody in the house has ever played, talk about learning Swahili. If you don't have an ad-blocker installed and you have ANY social media accounts active on your phone when you have that discussion around your device, it will show up most riki tik. Make the mistake of talking about something...forbidden, and do so more than once or twice as a joke, and don't be surprised to see your data on the device take a small uptick (almost unnoticeable but there nonetheless) and possibly the amount of free space on your device drop ever so slightly (surely it's caching something from the web or the app or the game I'm playing). Keep talking about it like you are serious and somehow you'll get some attention that you don't want. I'll put my betting quarter on that one.
Big brother is listening and he doesn't have your best interests at heart. Tech, da** is you do use it and da** if you don't. Not going to win this round. The sea change has not been in computers per se, it has been in data storage. With raspberry pi and a few $150 hard drives, I can have terabytes of storage and access any of it in milliseconds. I haven't even a concept any more of the data stored in a servo farm.
I look up stuff and next thing it is an ad on my screen somewhere. I use adblocker and duckduck go. Say what you mean and stand by it. I have seen pictures of giant data farms being built and read that every bit of electronic data goes through these places. Watching a movie about Edward Snowden was interesting also. Real Privacy is pretty much dead.
Use Opera browser with CNTRL-SHIFT-N option and turn on VPN. Even then, your ISP still has record of where you go and what you look at, even running TOR, because the data still comes through them. If you gotta browse something that can't be connected to you, get a yard sale laptop and use someones WIFI. ANYTHING that travels through the ISP head-end is potentially logged, and anything going through Google is most certainly logged. Case in point: Our 100 meg dedicated fiber to the stations master control had 1.8 meg of overhead we couldn't account for. Watching the traffic on the router, we found 74.125.86.191 eating it. Found out that is in Googles address range. We eventually firewalled every address range we could find of Google's to stop it. Moral: Even a dedicated fiber still has to go through multiple routers to reach it's destination.
Well at least it doesn't keep me awake like the choppers above the house or those damn drones looking through my windows so there's that I guess. Bomb......bullet........Russia.......Clinton........knowledge......prison
When I was very young I invited Jesus Christ into my life , and from that day forward I had a sense of being observed every where I went ,awake or asleep . As a kid one still makes mistakes often but realizing My works were not hidden I always had to clean up my act and make things right . My parents did the best they could with both discipline and mercy ,I am so thankful for . Point is being observed is not uncomfortable . When my parents built an air compressor business, I was a repairman that often the customer stood over my shoulder while analyzing the damage to his equipment and ascertaining what caused it. At first it made me nervous but in time I understood the need some folk have to know why something failed "in their view" , not hear say . I understand the levels of distrust people have in one another in business ,it's the world we live in. I don't mind being observed however , there are wicked people that will manipulate the information to suit their own agendas ,and that's the problem .
