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I believe I have a captive audience here in this particular thread. I'm not so much worried about what they'll hear, at face value, but what that information might be used for unexpectedly.
If I go full-on tinfoil hat, my worst speculated outcome would be for an ongoing transcription (and audio files) to be kept on users to not just target ads, but to create a "social credit score" for the individual based on what is hear, vocal tone, etc.
I don't want to come home one day and get on the phone to vent to my best friend, then have some smart assistant log my vocal stress levels, voice fingerprint, and word choice and label me mentally unstable. LOL. Then I get a surprise next time I go into Bass Pro Shop - "Sir, I'm sorry, we can't sell that to you".
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Just remember, there's a reason Gmail gives you 15 GB of data at no out-of-pocket cost to you. What's more suspicious is Google photos. You can pay for more storage, but if you let Google size your photos for you, you can store an unlimited amount. (???)
Google nor Amazon are recording you without your consent.
Google nor Amazon nor Facebook are eavesdropping on your conversations and sending you ads. I have tested this so much it's not even funny. Like analytic thorough testing.
In the article, any one actually read it?
Google and Amazon employees can listen to audio that you VOLUNTARILY SEND TO THE SERVICES. When you say "Alexa" or "OK Google"... this is the audio they have access to.
This should surprise no one.
Google gives you free storage space for the same reason Apple does: because they know you will run out and then they will sell you more. Period. Plain old trying to make money.
It's pretty brilliant actually. Apple gives you 5GB. Everyone runs out of that. Then they offer you like 20 or 50 for only 99 cents a month. Actually not a bad deal. The last estimate I saw was 11,000,000 people pay that 99 cents. A month. Apple is making $11 MILLION dollars a month on that alone.
I'm not saying these companies are all safe and secure and on your side. But the level of spying some of you think is going on: isn't.
Then your testing wasn't thorough enough.
For all of the people who have experienced this exact phenomenon, consider the following:
I will often take it upon myself to review privacy settings when I install an app. My wife doesn't really get into her Settings menu.
I have my microphone and camera permissions disabled for Instagram, I exist on there, but haven't posted anything new since several phones ago. She has posted a few things within the past year, so her mic/cam permissions are on.
We hold discussions in the car during trips about brand new topics, never Googled or spoken before. The very next time she opened her app less than an hour later. There is an ad for a this exact product we were discussing (precisely that new flavor of pistachios). This goes on to happen again, different product, different ad, same sequence of events. By the way, I have never been targeted for ads like that. It's easy to write off something as a coincidence with a single occurrence. Most people do that to keep their own sanity. But with each succeeding repeatable instance, the chance of coincidence goes down exponentially, to where you're playing Mega Millions hoping for proof that it's still a coincidence.
I have, however, received several targeted ads from things I've typed into (seemingly private) conversations via iMessage. According to Apple, Apple does not possess the content of iMessages, it is purportedly encrypted end-to-end. But for anyone who installs apps with direct access to your keyboard (BITMOJI), be aware that this follows you from app-to-app, wherever your keyboard can be used. So Snapchat can feed you ads based off what you typed into iMessage, because Bitmoji requires "full keyboard access" to generate paste-able imagines of those personalized, Nintendo Wii "Mii"-like characters.
I don't care what you call it. I don't care if Instagram doesn't explicitly send "YOUR NAME", it sends some unique identifier that has a positive match with a product or related ad from advertisers who pay them to feed their ads in exactly that way. Instagram similar to Google in that the source of their revenue is 90+% from ads. This is dangerous. Think about it. They can afford to not only make the initial investments, but MAINTAIN operations of completely unprofitable and insolvent ventures for their own entertainment.
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Just remember, Larry Ellison of Oracle (huge database software company, for those not in the know) volunteered to DONATE the infrastructure to create a National ID program for all US citizens. It was received with a warm "thanks, but no thanks" from the government (at the time). Not sure such attempts at tracking and centralizing the most minute and insignificant of events and behaviors will always be politely declined like that.
I can almost guarantee, they have spying methods that NO ONE on here is even aware of!
Yep. Just saw a headline that hundreds of Android apps share information that they shouldn't based on the permissions selected by the user. You can be sure that Google has been aware of and supported this for quite some time.
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.” - 1984
Yep. Just saw a headline that hundreds of Android apps share information that they shouldn't based on the permissions selected by the user. You can be sure that Google has been aware of and supported this for quite some time.
“You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every moment scrutinized.†- 1984
I believe it.
Can any lay person tell me - and you don't have to be technical to understand this - that for an app like Facebook, it lets you "allow" or "deny" access to your microphone. It's just "on" or "off".
You cannot specify that you want it only to record sound when you're filming a video, but not in the background to feed you targeted ads. I wonder why?
They feed off of "well I want my videos to have sound..." and hope people move on with their life. And they do. Not knowing they're being monetized and receiving none of it.
Do a test, say something like "I want to buy ____." "I heard this place ____ was really good." "Can you look up some places to eat." to yourself or someone else.
Then open your browser a day later and you may start seeing pop-up ads that coincides with the conversation that Google recorded. That's how analytics work.
Yup, we tried it here. All I did was suggest we talk about getting ‘new tires or going on vacation or something’ & sure enough ...
PLEASE stop believing this. Here's the thing: it would be SO easy for someone who knows what they are doing to "bust" these companies. All you have to do is turn off cell data and monitor traffic on your router. Ridiculously easy for anyone who knows a little bit about this stuff.
Not ONLY that, but do you know how many people would have to be 'in' on this? You can believe they have things we have no idea about, but people simply can't keep their mouths shut. Someone somewhere would have leaked this by now, surely. That factor alone should give you comfort.
/Sidenote: this is also what I bring up when someone thinks the NFL/NBA is rigged. There's no way the number of people it would take to make that happen would be able to keep it secret.
Quote:
I believe it.
Stop.
Quote:
Can any lay person tell me - and you don't have to be technical to understand this - that for an app like Facebook, it lets you "allow" or "deny" access to your microphone. It's just "on" or "off".
Correct
Quote:
You cannot specify that you want it only to record sound when you're filming a video, but not in the background to feed you targeted ads. I wonder why?
This is how Android and Apple works. And it works just fine. You can't give partial permission to an app. It either has access or it doesn't.
Quote:
They feed off of "well I want my videos to have sound..." and hope people move on with their life. And they do. Not knowing they're being monetized and receiving none of it.
Paranoid BS. This is how Operating Systems on Mobile work. If you don't trust Facebook why are you trying to record videos in the Facebook app? Or Messenger. Or whatever you're using?
I have almost completely switched from google to duckduckgo due to all the recent news about the company. I wonder how many others have been turned off by some of the headlines?
If you are using Chrome, your duckduckgo searches are also probably recorded. Google also pays something like $1 billion per year to Mozilla foundation (Firefox) for their search history as their default search in the address bar is Google. You have to use Brave browser + duckduckgo. My only issue with Brave is it doesn't have the ability to play videos when I mouse over them, otherwise it is actually a better browser than either Chrome or Firefox.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ddm2k
Just remember, there's a reason Gmail gives you 15 GB of data at no out-of-pocket cost to you. What's more suspicious is Google photos. You can pay for more storage, but if you let Google size your photos for you, you can store an unlimited amount. (???)
Not really how it works. There is actually no "Delete" option in your Gmail. When you "delete" an email, all it does is masks it from the user and keeps it in storage on google servers. This has been the case since gmail came out.
Not really how it works. There is actually no "Delete" option in your Gmail. When you "delete" an email, all it does is masks it from the user and keeps it in storage on google servers. This has been the case since gmail came out.
I have noticed this when swiping left on a message in my iPhone's Mail app:
iCloud
- More...
- Flag
- Delete
Hotmail
- More...
- Flag
- Trash
Gmail
- More...
- Flag
- Archive
I have run out of free space before in my Gmail account, where I was encouraged to delete some things to make room. You have to select "More..." then "Move" and move it to "Trash". Then delete it from trash.
I have run out of free space before in my Gmail account, where I was encouraged to delete some things to make room. You have to select "More..." then "Move" and move it to "Trash". Then delete it from trash.
When you delete it from trash, it doesn't actually delete the e-mail. It hides it from your gmail user interface and moves it to google storage servers.
I don't use Google for my main mail any more, and I use Bing instead of Google search (not quite paranoid enough yet to go to DuckDuckGo). I don't trust them. I do have an Amazon Echo Dot, only because it was cheaper than a radio for my home office. And as others have said, I don't say anything at home that could cause me problems. But I basically don't trust Amazon any more than I do Google.
Facebook is in my opinion even worse - they will track your activity around the web with supercookies and target you with ads based on what you've been viewing. They can track what you're doing even if you're using a private window:
So if you go to a site selling umbrellas, you'll see ads for umbrellas when you go to Facebook. They could also in theory track things like political activity. I personally wouldn't be surprised if they're doing so already.
I use Firefox, and have the Facebook Container extension installed which makes it harder for Facebook to track my activities off Facebook:
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