Is your iPhone listening to you?

[The-Real-Deal82]

Yes, I have encountered this a few times and it has happened with something very obscure that I have never Googled too. My wife and I were talking about a particular umbrella pot that she wanted for the hallway and some time later an ad for that product showed up in my feed. That confirmed for me that the phone listens while you have Facebook open and I really don't know how that is legal tbh.

 

[Cruncher]

I work in IT and I get that question asked a lot. This Video explains a lot:

 

[iLuddite]

Yes; I remember years ago discussing cold/flu-like symptoms with my stepmother in the kitchen and then looking down and immediately seeing an ad for Delsym on Reddit (whether it was an app or the website, I can't recall). I also can't remember which iPhone model I had at the time but it certainly was an iPhone of some kind.

 

[fatTribble]

I have a friend who works for a major data firm; he has told me that he thinks if people actually understood how much (and what) data they had on people there would be literal riots. 😬

Just curious, has your friend ever given you tips about how to circumvent data collection by these companies?

Personally I have no Google or Meta accounts. I don’t use Google for search. Most of the time I research a product I’ll go to retail sites like Amazon or Best Buy rather than an internet search engine.
I regularly delete website data from Safari. I’m not sure how effective any of these things are. I’m not sure what else to do.

 

[cableguy84]

Not only listening to you… but bear in mind how much of the phones super powerful processor is dedicated to machine learning. These phones know what we are thinking before we have even thought of it, have experienced it myself

I have been thinking of stuff without even verbalising or searching within google. Hours/minutes later this stuff has appeared as advertisements

 

[surferfb]

Just curious, has your friend ever given you tips about how to circumvent data collection by these companies?

Personally I have no Google or Meta accounts. I don’t use Google for search. Most of the time I research a product I’ll go to retail sites like Amazon or Best Buy rather than an internet search engine.
I regularly delete website data from Safari. I’m not sure how effective any of these things are. I’m not sure what else to do.

Nope, I can ask though.

He is clear it’s not there is like a lookup function or anything, but that if a company already knew they wanted to sell to you, say because you’re a VIP or work for one, ads can be targeted to a level that is creepy accurate. But doing so is extremely expensive and not worth.

 

[johannnn]

After discussing something? nope never

After googling something? yep

After my wife on the same wifi googled something? yep

 

[aihpcfl]

I, too, would think of the apps. I can't say this has happened to me, though I've heard of it from others. But I don't use the popular social apps.

 

[Reimulo]

The boring reality is ad networks don’t need to, and doing it would be suicidal for them. Recording everyone’s mic 24/7 would mean collecting petabytes of audio per day, transcribing it in real time across hundreds of languages, and indexing it instantly.

If it is technologically feasible, and I’m not even sure it is, it’d be astronomically expensive, technically unwieldy, and flat-out illegal in most jurisdictions. One leak or subpoena and the company would be finished.

What they do have is cheap, legal, structured data: search history, app use, your friends’ activity, shopping records, location, Wi-Fi networks, IP addresses, device profiles, demographic data, social graphs, and probably thousands of other data points. From that they build “look-alike” audiences. Combined with the sheer number of ads served, coincidences are inevitable (and trust me, you don’t notice the poorly targeted ones as much as you think you do)

It only feels personal because you notice it right after you talked about something. The creepy accuracy comes from massive tracking and probability, not secret eavesdropping.

Man you will be so mad when you find out that you can start Siri with casually saying the name, same with Alexa.

As far as I know the storage on these devices is below the petabyte range.

Its about recognizing pattern that’s can be associated with keywords, on device, and not having a copy of every word you ever said close to a smartphone

 

[4sallypat]

Wonder if the NSA or CCP is listening in on conversations ?

 

[Heat_Fan89]

Is my iPhone listening to me?

I don't think so but I heard some giggling from my phone when I dropped my shorts to sit on the throne.

 

[Tdude96]

Just curious, has your friend ever given you tips about how to circumvent data collection by these companies?

Personally I have no Google or Meta accounts. I don’t use Google for search. Most of the time I research a product I’ll go to retail sites like Amazon or Best Buy rather than an internet search engine.
I regularly delete website data from Safari. I’m not sure how effective any of these things are. I’m not sure what else to do.

Data/ad brokers including Alphabet, Meta, Amazon and many more do build profiles for people they can't necessarily put a name or address to. As long as they can associate it with some sort of individual identifier: IP, device identifier, email, etc., they will collect the information and build profiles.

There's only so much you can do without causing inconvenience to yourself. Start with the easiest things that cover the broadest number of areas without being too inconvenient. If you have iCloud, Use Private Relay and switch to using Safari's Private Window for everything. Make it the default option to minimize accidents.

Use the iCloud Hide My Email functionality for everything. Any site or app you sign up for or anytime you give out your email address, use a new Hide My Email address. If someplace starts spamming you, or if you no longer need to receive communication from them, you can always deactivate or delete that address.

Get a trustworthy VPN. Many VPNs will "double wrap" so to speak with Private Relay, but that doesn't really protect your browsing any better than Private Relay by itself. What it does do is add a certain level of protection and a little more anonymity to all the rest of your device's online communications that aren't protected by Private Relay. Some VPNs don't play well with Private Relay. YMMV

Have good app hygiene. Delete apps you don't use much. When you are downloading a new app, read its privacy information, but remember that Apple doesn't necessarily verify that they always follow what they say, nor is there a warning if they update their privacy information later.

Find a trustworthy firewall app that can prevent apps from "phoning home" without your say-so. A lot of these apps also have VPN, but not necessarily good VPN so you might have to use separate apps for the two functions.

Find a trustworthy ad blocker that doesn't just remove ads from display, but blocks their addresses as well. Just removing them from display doesn't do much other than clear visual clutter. It doesn't stop information collection.

Some of these do impact convenience and usability. For example, some apps or websites will reduce functionality or stop working altogether if you are blocking their ads or preventing the app from "phoning home." Some places that serve ads, if they detect countermeasures, will serve the most grotesque ads they have on file in order to deter use of ad blockers. There are always trade-offs.

There's no way that I'm aware of to 100% protect your privacy from these bad actors without disconnecting entirely and paying for things in cash. But you can certainly reduce how much data you're giving out, making profiles on you or your devices less valuable and less accurate. Every bit helps.

 

[TechnoMonk]

It’s confirmation bias. You may have scrolled past 100 ads, including the one you noticed after conversation. It just that you pay attention to the add. The targeted ads are based on persona created by tracking you across the apps/websites etc.

 

[Tdude96]

Nope, I can ask though.

He is clear it’s not there is like a lookup function or anything, but that if a company already knew they wanted to sell to you, say because you’re a VIP or work for one, ads can be targeted to a level that is creepy accurate. But doing so is extremely expensive and not worth.

Some of these places are aware of just how creepy their activities are and do try to avoid making it feel too creepy. In my work I've come across three companies that work with data brokers to identify people's names and addresses when they browse a site so they can send followup advertisements either by email or by snail mail.

So if I were to go to one of those sites that has their tracking on it and look at a particular product, they'd tie that browsing data back to me, my email address and/or my physical address. Even if I wasn't logged in they could serve me an ad and personalize it to what I was looking at. If I was looking at Widgets, that company could send me an ad with an offer of 10% off Widgets.

However, in order to reduce the creepiness factor (just a tad) even where they can associate browsing activity to a specific person, they won't serve that ad so personally unless that person has previously made a purchase from that site. That way you're not receiving email or snail mail from a company you haven't done business with just because you browsed their website. It takes the edge off of the creepiness factor of what they actually could do.

 

[surferfb]

Man you will be so mad when you find out that you can start Siri with casually saying the name, same with Alexa.

As far as I know the storage on these devices is below the petabyte range.

Its about recognizing pattern that’s can be associated with keywords, on device, and not having a copy of every word you ever said close to a smartphone

I can't believe I have to spell this out, but fine.

You’re mixing up two completely different things. Yes, your phone has to locally listen for one wake word like “Hey Siri” or “Alexa.” That’s a tiny on-device model pattern-matching a few syllables and does not require recording or analyzing full conversations. It never leaves the device until you actually trigger it.

If what you think is true, and the phones are constantly listening for patterns. Think about how this would work. Say I am talking to a friend about dog food for his dog. I don't own a dog, but I start seeing ads. Which makes more sense?

My phone is constantly listening to me model:

1. The app must Continuously listen to all audio in the room (not just wake-words) all the time, in the background, bypassing the "microphone is on" without Apple catching them.
2. Stream that audio over the network or store it locally until it can upload petabytes per day at global scale.
3. Transcribe it in real time into text, in every language/dialect, for every human being on earth.
4. Parse the text for ad-related concepts (“dog food”), link it to your personal ad profile, and do this for billions of users.
5. Push a targeted ad to you within a day or two.
6. Avoid getting detected by security researchers, governments, disgruntled employees, etc. If you mess up this step your company's leadership goes to jail

And remember, if you are right and they are recognizing patterns and that is happening on device, why am I getting the dog food ads? They don't know to listen for dog food for me, because I don't own a dog, have never searched for dog food, etc. They wouldn't know to be looking for the "dog" pattern to recognize UNLESS they were streaming, transcribing, parsing, etc.

Meanwhile, the inference model:

1. My friend and I have phones with location services on. Facebook/Google see that we're in the same room for 45 minutes.
2. My friend has recently searched for dog food, joined a pet group, and bought something pet-related.
3. The ad network puts me into a “look-alike” or “household” audience with my friend because we were in the same room.
4. When the dog food advertiser uploads a list or bids on that audience, the system shows me an ad too, even if I've never owned a dog or searched for dog food.

It's not remotely feasible that the phones are listening to you. It'd be way too much work for way too little return when what they already have is way more than good enough. And that's before you take into account the risk of fines, jail time, and the company being dismantled by every country on Earth. It just isn't happening.

 

[Timpetus]

I once had an ad for a product I'd never heard of in my life pop up a couple hours after said brand was mentioned by a comedian during a video clip my friend played on his Android phone in the same room. That one seems impossible without my phone listening to me, at least the Facebook app. I kill the app after every use now, seems to have stopped these near-impossible "coincidences."

 

[zkap]

Your phone’s not actually “listening.”

This is the answer. Not gonna quote everything you wrote, but what you said is what's happening. Companies run ads based on probability. If I'm a 36 year-old hetero white atheist living in Europe, it is not a big stretch to assume I'm gonna have similar interests to other guys from the same group living in the same part of the world. So I often get car ads when I never discuss cars with anyone.

There was an article about this and the point was that your phone doesn't need to listen to you because you're not that special. Instead, you're boring and very much like other people of the same sex / age / location. You spend time in proximity of someone and if you can be placed in the same social category (so it's likely you'd be interested in the same stuff), you will be served ads about things that that person looked up. It's simple and extremely effective.

 

[Wando64]

Bear in mind, I’m not musical

Your avatar gives a different vibe though

 

[joeblow7777]

I once had an ad for a product I'd never heard of in my life pop up a couple hours after said brand was mentioned by a comedian during a video clip my friend played on his Android phone in the same room. That one seems impossible without my phone listening to me, at least the Facebook app. I kill the app after every use now, seems to have stopped these near-impossible "coincidences."

That's far from a "near impossible" coincidence. In all likelihood you'd encountered ads for the product before or would have encountered the same ad anyway, but our conscious brains tune out most of the ads we're exposed to and only really make note of the ones that we've made a connection to, such as having recently heard someone talk about it.

For example, I'd never heard of Temu and one day my brother mentioned it. I was like, "what's Temu"? and he couldn't believe I'd never heard of it because there are so many ads. After that, I noticed Temu ads all the time. I'm not paranoid enough to think it's because my phone spied on us. The ads were always there and I'd never noticed them before I had reason to think about it.

 

[LionTeeth]

I can't believe I have to spell this out, but fine.

You’re mixing up two completely different things. Yes, your phone has to locally listen for one wake word like “Hey Siri” or “Alexa.” That’s a tiny on-device model pattern-matching a few syllables and does not require recording or analyzing full conversations. It never leaves the device until you actually trigger it.

If what you think is true, and the phones are constantly listening for patterns. Think about how this would work. Say I am talking to a friend about dog food for his dog. I don't own a dog, but I start seeing ads. Which makes more sense?

My phone is constantly listening to me model:

1. The app must Continuously listen to all audio in the room (not just wake-words) all the time, in the background, bypassing the "microphone is on" without Apple catching them.
2. Stream that audio over the network or store it locally until it can upload petabytes per day at global scale.
3. Transcribe it in real time into text, in every language/dialect, for every human being on earth.
4. Parse the text for ad-related concepts (“dog food”), link it to your personal ad profile, and do this for billions of users.
5. Push a targeted ad to you within a day or two.
6. Avoid getting detected by security researchers, governments, disgruntled employees, etc. If you mess up this step your company's leadership goes to jail

And remember, if you are right and they are recognizing patterns and that is happening on device, why am I getting the dog food ads? They don't know to listen for dog food for me, because I don't own a dog, have never searched for dog food, etc. They wouldn't know to be looking for the "dog" pattern to recognize UNLESS they were streaming, transcribing, parsing, etc.

Meanwhile, the inference model:

1. My friend and I have phones with location services on. Facebook/Google see that we're in the same room for 45 minutes.
2. My friend has recently searched for dog food, joined a pet group, and bought something pet-related.
3. The ad network puts me into a “look-alike” or “household” audience with my friend because we were in the same room.
4. When the dog food advertiser uploads a list or bids on that audience, the system shows me an ad too, even if I've never owned a dog or searched for dog food.

It's not remotely feasible that the phones are listening to you. It'd be way too much work for way too little return when what they already have is way more than good enough. And that's before you take into account the risk of fines, jail time, and the company being dismantled by every country on Earth. It just isn't happening.

I am sorry but you are being naive and way too trusting that laws apply to these firms.

Try it yourself. Your example is flawed because of the "friend over".

Simply talk about something like ballerina slippers or something completely random around your phone. By yourself. No one around. And watch the ads come up. Like I said before it's easily provable, and there is no cost too high to do it when you can promise accuracy like that.

 

[surferfb]

I am sorry but you are being naive and way too trusting that laws apply to these firms.

Try it yourself. Your example is flawed because of the "friend over".

Simply talk about something like ballerina slippers or something completely random around your phone. By yourself. No one around. And watch the ads come up. Like I said before it's easily provable, and there is no cost too high to do it when you can promise accuracy like that.

It's not happening. It just isn't. If you want to believe it, I obviously can't stop you, but I can't stress enough how much it isn't happening. There have been multiple studies by security researchers, journalists, even government agencies. Some of them even found sketchy stuff the companies were doing! But not one found any evidence that the phones were listening to conversations.

They know what you buy (remember Google buys access to like 70% of US credit card data credit card data). If you use Gmail they know what emails you get (receipts, who sent you what, what newsletters you read, what you're interested in, etc.). They know what websites you visit and for how long. They know you're on a group email list with other parents at your kid's school. They know who you're married to. They know people who buy A are 87% more likely to buy B. They know your demographics. They know what you Google. They also know your wife googled "what movies are out now" earlier in the day. They know several other parents in your kid's class have been googling "ballerina lessons" because one of the popular kids said they are going to do ballet and some of those other kids told their parents about it. They know your wife's birthday is coming up and so you might be in the market for new earrings. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So at dinner your wife mentions "let's go see a movie this weekend, I heard "X: The Movie" was good" and your daughter says "I think I want to do ballet with my friends at school" and then you open your phone later that evening and see ads for "X: The Movie" and ballerina slippers. You also don't notice the ads for earring because it didn't come up at dinner and you haven't thought about a present yet. "I haven't searched for them, so the phone must be listening to me. How else would they know we just talked about that movie and ballet" It's a reasonable explanation if you don't stop to think about it.

Nobody has ever produced a reproducible experiment showing that phones secretly record speech for ads. People have tried (oh have they tried) and the result is always the same: literally no evidence. Here are the first four articles I found:

• https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-...ing-to-you-heres-but-the-truth-is-even-worse/
• https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
• https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/02/24/is-your-phone-listening-to-you/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phone-listening-facebook-google-ads/

Why would they risk everything by running a global always-on surveillance/transcription program across billions of phones (which would absolutely show up in your data and battery usage), which again would be legally suicidal Especially when the current legal data is already good enough to deliver freaky "coincidences."

Alright, I've wasted too much time here on something that is almost certainly not going to change your mind. Have a good evening!

 

[LionTeeth]

It's not happening. It just isn't. If you want to believe it, I obviously can't stop you, but I can't stress enough how much it isn't happening. There have been multiple studies by security researchers, journalists, even government agencies. Some of them even found sketchy stuff the companies were doing! But not one found any evidence that the phones were listening to conversations.

They know what you buy (remember Google buys access to like 70% of US credit card data credit card data). If you use Gmail they know what emails you get (receipts, who sent you what, what newsletters you read, what you're interested in, etc.). They know what websites you visit and for how long. They know you're on a group email list with other parents at your kid's school. They know who you're married to. They know people who buy A are 87% more likely to buy B. They know your demographics. They know what you Google. They also know your wife googled "what movies are out now" earlier in the day. They know several other parents in your kid's class have been googling "ballerina lessons" because one of the popular kids said they are going to do ballet and some of those other kids told their parents about it. They know your wife's birthday is coming up and so you might be in the market for new earrings. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So at dinner your wife mentions "let's go see a movie this weekend, I heard "X: The Movie" was good" and your daughter says "I think I want to do ballet with my friends at school" and then you open your phone later that evening and see ads for "X: The Movie" and ballerina slippers. You also don't notice the ads for earring because it didn't come up at dinner and you haven't thought about a present yet. "I haven't searched for them, so the phone must be listening to me. How else would they know we just talked about that movie and ballet" It's a reasonable explanation if you don't stop to think about it.

Nobody has ever produced a reproducible experiment showing that phones secretly record speech for ads. People have tried (oh have they tried) and the result is always the same: literally no evidence. Here are the first four articles I found:

• https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-...ing-to-you-heres-but-the-truth-is-even-worse/
• https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
• https://www.welivesecurity.com/2020/02/24/is-your-phone-listening-to-you/
• https://www.cbsnews.com/news/phone-listening-facebook-google-ads/

Why would they risk everything by running a global always-on surveillance/transcription program across billions of phones (which would absolutely show up in your data and battery usage), which again would be legally suicidal Especially when the current legal data is already good enough to deliver freaky "coincidences."

Alright, I've wasted too much time here on something that is almost certainly not going to change your mind. Have a good evening!

Hey what no, I am definitely open to changing my mind. I've lived long enough to know a closed mind is supremely limiting. I am sorry you feel exasperated. I appreciate the links, I read through most of it. I am just still not convinced. And here's why:

1) Legal reasons. Let's take this off the table. At least I do in my reasoning. Do you really think these giant tech firms give a you know what if they're doing anything illegal? It's a pesky fine or a quick tribunal if they're ever caught. The law is not a concern of theirs.

2) It is infinitely repeatable. Again your example includes other people and other phones and location etc. I am saying the opposite. You, dear forum member, sit by yourself with your phone, speak about something random for a while. The ads will pop up. None of this "well your wife maybe googled such and such". No. Talk about brown leather belts over and over. And you'll see it. Pick a topic you normally wouldn't look for or search and it'll happen. At least it does to me and everyone that does it.

I know, I've read all the articles and understand cookies and pattern recognition etc. But it all just doesn't add up to me. Maybe I'm nuts but majority of people out there agree with me.

 

[AdamInKent]

Maybe I'm nuts but majority of people out there agree with me.

The majority of people have very little idea of how this technology works, nor what would be required to make it work as you describe.

 

[surferfb]

Hey what no, I am definitely open to changing my mind. I've lived long enough to know a closed mind is supremely limiting. I am sorry you feel exasperated. I appreciate the links, I read through most of it. I am just still not convinced. And here's why:

1) Legal reasons. Let's take this off the table. At least I do in my reasoning. Do you really think these giant tech firms give a you know what if they're doing anything illegal? It's a pesky fine or a quick tribunal if they're ever caught. The law is not a concern of theirs.

2) It is infinitely repeatable. Again your example includes other people and other phones and location etc. I am saying the opposite. You, dear forum member, sit by yourself with your phone, speak about something random for a while. The ads will pop up. None of this "well your wife maybe googled such and such". No. Talk about brown leather belts over and over. And you'll see it. Pick a topic you normally wouldn't look for or search and it'll happen. At least it does to me and everyone that does it.

I know, I've read all the articles and understand cookies and pattern recognition etc. But it all just doesn't add up to me. Maybe I'm nuts but majority of people out there agree with me.

Appreciate you keeping an open mind. Enjoy your evening!

 

[eoblaed]

That said I’m quite taken by the idea of Frequency Illusion, perhaps I always get adverts for drumming, my eye skirted over them all, until today.

I think the idea is more that we all see ads by the dozens, if not hundreds, every day, across a wide range of products/services. Every once in a while there will be one that happens to coincide with something we were discussing recently. It's inevitable, really.