Does your phone listen in on you?

Did you ever have the feeling your phone is eavesdropping on you? For example when you just had a converstation about a product with someone offline and all of a sudden it appears as an advertisement on your social media? Or that you were looking at a product in a store and later you see an advertisement of that same product whilst scrolling on Instragram? To be honest with you, I have had this quite a few times and it gave me the feeling that my phone was listening in on me. Did you ever experience this as well, and most of all, is it true that phones eavesdrop on us? I always thought this phenomenen was in my head, but after searching about the topic online, I quickly learnt that I am not the only one experiencing this. Google is full of search suggestions on this topic and it turns out that companies and blogs like to play into the topic as well.

“We don’t look at your messages, we don’t listen in on your microphone, doing so would be super problematic for a lot of different reasons, but I recognize you’re not gonna really believe me”

– Mosseri

Graham, Jefferson. Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things.
Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things (phys.org)

Big brother is watching you

Despite how much I now and then worry that social media platforms know too much, if not everything, about me, would it be even realistic that our phones are listening in on us? Imagine our phones having to record everything we say? How would this look like in practice and would all of this effort be worthwhile for anyone? We already know social media platforms keep track of our geographical location, search input and our personal interests. However, some argue that your phone and app settings allow applications to listen in on your conversations, as such apps have access to your microphone. Vice experimented with this through letting one of their employees whisper the same words, amongst others ‘shirts’ and ‘back to university’, into their phone everyday and check whether Facebook responed to this through giving perosnalized advertisement. Vice told the results came overnight and concluded that your phone is indeed listening in on you and that this information is used to create advertisement personalized to you. The recommendations that are given to prevent this from happening to you, are to deny access to your microphone for every app you have downloaded and to disable OK Google, Siri, Alexa or any other device there is out there that you can talk to.

Tracking or listening in?

Other people say that listening in on your conversations is not even necessary for social media to create personalized advertisement. The reason for this is that your social media already knows a lot about you. As mentioned earlier, it is no secret that our phone and social media platforms use our geographical location, search input and analyse your interests. A social media platform such as Facebook may know your age and gender and will present you with advertisement that people with the same age and gender are interested in, assuming you will be interested in this as well. Furthermore, social media platforms sell your data to data collecting companies, who will sell this to third party companies who create targeted advertisement. When you start thinking about it we actually give social media a lot of information about ourselves. It knows your basic information, your network, it reads your messages, sees what you do and do not like and what you share.

What do you think? Do our phones and social media platforms listen to what we are saying or is it all in our heads?

Sources

Graham, Jefferson. Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things.

Is Facebook listening to me? Why those ads appear after you talk about things (phys.org)

Kim Komando for Fox News. You’re not paranoid. Your phone really is listening in.

You’re not paranoid. Your phone really is listening in. | Fox News

Sam Nichols for Vice. Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia.

Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia (vice.com)

Vidgerman, Aliza and Gabe, Turner for Security.org. How Much Would You Sell Your Social Media Data For?

How Much Would You Sell Your Social Media Data For? (security.org)