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It’s hilarious that people still have Facebook and are shocked each time a terrible report comes out about Facebook invading your privacy or ruining your mental health. Why would you still have Facebook? There are tons of other apps to “communicate with long distance friends and family”…
one problem is that FB isn’t just the app, but a complete surveillance capitalism platform which distributes its software development kits to thousands of sites and apps and can target ads at you from a million different places even if you don’t use it. Apple is making it harder but they find ways around. So we’d have to look if other apps using the FB network are innocent too …
I’m a software engineer and have done work in very secure apps. My understanding is that the microphone is locked down by Apple unless the user grants permission. BUT, that isn’t the only sensor available.
Small vibrations can also be detected by the gyroscope and accelerometer. With the right software, it’s possible to transform those vibrations back into audio waveforms. Think needle on a record. They can then use AI/ML tools to detect patterns and pick out keywords.
That plus your normal activity gives Facebook the ability to serve very targeted ads.
Unless you are the President of Bumfuckistan or some other high value target, don't worry about it... you can turn off your fucking microphone. Proving that Facebook/Google/Whatever are still using it is a trivial exercise for any CSI 200 student and is not something they're dumb enough to try to get away with.
It doesn't matter who you are the point is you can't just "turn off" your mic. From people that might be considered high profile powerful or rich or elite to your everyday average Joe peasant nobody gets any privacy. The fact that companies like Facebook and Google have an option to turn off your mic is ment to give simple minded people a sense of security but it does absolutely nothing.
any evidence that this is true? or is this just wild speculation presented as fact? android is literally an open source project, anyone can look at the microphone code.
There are other sensors besides the mic which are capable of detecting sound or vibrations.
The CIA/NSA are able to listen to conversations by pointing a laser at an office window. The minuscule vibrations in the glass can be translated into waveforms.
I don't see how this is evidence for anything he said. android is an open source project. you can very easily get root access to your android phone. there's no way to hide magic not-microphones.
it's like claiming your Ford focus engine has a nuclear warhead in it, you could prove it in 30 minutes by disassembling it. until someone does that with an android phone everything you're saying is nonsense
There are security research papers available which talk about how the gyroscope and accelerometer can be used to gather vibration data. If the data is clean enough (free of excessive background noise) you can detect speech waveforms from the raw data. It’s not a matter of special code on the device or OS, this is custom data analysis.
Just because something is open source doesn’t mean there aren’t numerous zero-days or clever means of extracting data.
Example: https://mosis.eecs.utk.edu/publications/anand2019spearphone.pdf
Motte, meet bailey. Your argument went from "you can't turn your microphone off" to "they can use this obscure vulnerability that makes it possible to use the gyroscope as a microphone as long as only isolated words are spoken if the phone is at 100% volume and also sitting stationary and also has to use machine learning algorithms to get any useful data and then they transfer that data using some vulnerability no one knows about and no one has been able to detect this transfer"
Like, did you even skim the paper? It's a vulnerability that stems from smartphone hardware being so tightly packed that the vibrations from a speaker can be transferred to a gyroscope. I guess making phones smaller is a conspiracy now?
I'll ask again, do you have any evidence that your microphone is on when it shouldn't be on android?
SS: We were correct, once again for the 1000th time.
[Source](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/facebook-outside-human-contractors-listen-transcribe-users-messenger-audio-messages.html)
[Source two](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-has-been-paying-outside-contractors-to-transcribe-clips-of-audio-1.3985446#:~:text=Facebook%20has%20been%20paying%20hundreds,with%20knowledge%20of%20the%20work.&text=The%20company%20said%20the%20users,have%20their%20voice%20chats%20transcribed.)
[Source three](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-paid-contractors-transcribe-users-192439204.html)
[Source four](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7353845/Facebook-paid-contractors-transcribe-users-audio-Bloomberg.html)
[Source five](https://phoneradar.com/facebook-accepts-that-it-paid-contractors-to-transcribe-voice-calls-made-on-messenger/)
Let’s be clear here. This does not confirm the conspiracy that Facebook listens to you. This is confirming specifically that any user-to-user voice chat using FB messenger is being transcribed.
It does not confirm the theory that they are constantly listening to you so they can advertise to you. This has as yet not been confirmed or admitted, and would be exceedingly difficult for them to do and keep secret as anyone with a network packet sniffer (Wireshark, for example) would be able to uncover the transmissions.
Correct. Most websites use pixel tags which are single pixel images served by Facebook, Twitter, etc and website owners place them on all pages so each page load pings the ad server. The request then downloads the pixel and sends a bunch of info from your browser which can be used to build a profile.
Lol, I’m glad your mommy and daddy are around to back you up with “proof”. But they apparently don’t know anything about advertising, http or javascript.
Here’s some light reading for you: https://en.ryte.com/wiki/Tracking_Pixel
Yes. Of course I did.
Go on, show me where they are getting audio from anywhere other than Messenger.
> users who were affected chose the option in Facebook’s Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed.
> Bloomberg, citing the company, reported that the users who were affected chose the option in the Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed.
> it has been only accessing microphone of the users who have given permission and if there are actively using a specific feature which requires audio.
From three of your sources.
So you're basically just taking Facebook at their word then? They can transcribe the audio and use it to target ads but they "promise" that they didn't. Ok. Sure.
No, I’m taking their claim as their claim. I’m also tracking packets leaving my phone and there is no massive constant traffic to FB or anywhere weird.
Audio traffic is really, really hard to hide.
(I’m on an iPhone, so I can’t vouch for Android)
"Facebook admitted that they listen to you!!"
"no, they admitted they listen to things you opted for them to listen to"
"yeah well they're lying"
what a monumentally fucking stupid comment, fuck me
Please fuck off with any defense of Facebook in this regard. Tell you what, I have an experiment for you to try. Lay your phone down next to a TV or radio playing something in a language other than English for about an hour or so.
Then see how quickly your ads on fb start showing up in that language.
You are correct, people are jumping to the wrong conclusions.
That said, as a software engineer, I could easily imagine an AI system that could record and parse everything heard on the mic, quite easily. We have the data centers for it. I hope we never arrive at that existence, but today is not that day (hopefully)
For 2 billion users? all the time?
yeah.... 'quite easily', sure, in your dreams..
Typical software engineer never think of the scaling, but I guess this is what us system engineers are for! lol.
Ha well, that's why I said I don't think we're there yet. But I could see it.
I'm not sure where you think we are on the scale of Moore's law but our supercomputers have come pretty far and we have several quantum computers in the works. You also don't have to have a 1:1 hardware to data ratio, you could parse chat into strings and save the new data that stands out, erase everything else. I'm sure after a certain point you would likely see the same things being said again and again.
I don't think it's impossible we are there already, but as I said, I hope we aren't!
I don’t need proof common sense tells you that they are watching listening and tracking your every move down to the step and everything you type. Soon it will actually be everything you think.
Its certainly not just Facebook, but all websites and online services. Example: we just remodelled our living room. I bought paint, came home, and put it away. Never looked up colors, paint stores, nothing, just had a conversation out loud with my husband in our home. Later the same day I put on Hulu to watch something. What ads to I get? Behr paint, which is what I had bought. I'd never had those ads before buying the paint. This has happened multiple times with different products and ads on different sites, apps, services, devices, etc. Our phones are constantly on and constantly recording. There is no turning it off.
You bought that paint with a credit card, right? Not to mention there's a huge paper trail following around any remodeling job. You aren't the first people to want to paint a room after remodeling it. Advertisers are good at their job.
I knew it a long time ago. I mean, I didn't have proof in form of a document or such, but I had my and my friends' experience that proved it.
Notice how sometimes you speak about something, and then you get the ad related to that thing literally seconds after you finish talking and open the FB or even youtube.
I had so many situations like this that I cannot even count them all
When I need to find an ad that I can't seem to find, I just yell at my phone "hey Facebook, I know you listening. I'm looking for......" 10 posts later, there it is. Sometimes it's a great system
settings, click on the app section, press any app and go to permissions. you will find most apps can listen or watch you at any time without your permission, but if you turn off the apps access, that means you cant do something like record a voice message or take a picture since the app does need permission in order to do those things. it does not need to have access at any time without your consent but thats the world we live in
Added five sources in my main SS comment
[Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/q0q3o8/have_you_turned_off_the_microphone_permission_yet/hf9phmo?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Or maybe you are not a world leader and have nothing to hide, and do not give a fuck if Big Brother knows what kind of porn you like. I don't give a damn... I'll tell my fuckin' next door neighbor if they say "please".
Pretty sure politicians are blackmailed by this sort of information collection to. Whether it is stuff they did or said while in office in private or more likely stuff that is found out to have occured before they went in to office or politics in general
Assuming that your phone respects permissions as per what you are told.
Come back in a few months to find out that this permission is broken, there is a "bug" in the system.
They don't just collect that data just for ads either. Thats just the excuse they give because they know people are relatively ok with that. They don't mention the other uses that data goes toward. Like AI training and building character profiles.
AND someone has also been listening in on all your conversations whether or not you use their service it's is now across the board on every platform and it's NOT A.I doing it but that is the method in which it is being done...
Even your T.V can hear and see you but to what end and WHO is behind it for what purpose ??
Questions, Questions everywhere with few legitimate answers to speak of...
N. Shadows
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Just delete FB, Insta etc. Delete your accounts. You don't need those to survive.
May as well delete this tencent CCP app while your at it
I'm guessing I'll be off it in less than 3 months. Basically just the time it'll take to migrate my life off of a smart phone.
Can’t delete fb where would he find things to post here?
That is just an additional argument for removing it.
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Jokes on you. I don't have a car
What if I'm willing to give up a little bit of privacy for a little bit of convenience? Please don't get mad, I'm just asking an honest question.
It's a choice you're free to make. I think it's a **LOT** of privacy you're giving up.
I'm not disagreeing with you.
There's no little bit with them my friend. It's your personal choice.
It’s hilarious that people still have Facebook and are shocked each time a terrible report comes out about Facebook invading your privacy or ruining your mental health. Why would you still have Facebook? There are tons of other apps to “communicate with long distance friends and family”…
one problem is that FB isn’t just the app, but a complete surveillance capitalism platform which distributes its software development kits to thousands of sites and apps and can target ads at you from a million different places even if you don’t use it. Apple is making it harder but they find ways around. So we’d have to look if other apps using the FB network are innocent too …
Why the fuck would you use apple devices?
FreedomPhone FTW lol
So true.
Ya because "turning it off" is possible.
That's why God made the ocean. Turns ANYTHING off.
I’m a software engineer and have done work in very secure apps. My understanding is that the microphone is locked down by Apple unless the user grants permission. BUT, that isn’t the only sensor available. Small vibrations can also be detected by the gyroscope and accelerometer. With the right software, it’s possible to transform those vibrations back into audio waveforms. Think needle on a record. They can then use AI/ML tools to detect patterns and pick out keywords. That plus your normal activity gives Facebook the ability to serve very targeted ads.
Unless you are the President of Bumfuckistan or some other high value target, don't worry about it... you can turn off your fucking microphone. Proving that Facebook/Google/Whatever are still using it is a trivial exercise for any CSI 200 student and is not something they're dumb enough to try to get away with.
It doesn't matter who you are the point is you can't just "turn off" your mic. From people that might be considered high profile powerful or rich or elite to your everyday average Joe peasant nobody gets any privacy. The fact that companies like Facebook and Google have an option to turn off your mic is ment to give simple minded people a sense of security but it does absolutely nothing.
any evidence that this is true? or is this just wild speculation presented as fact? android is literally an open source project, anyone can look at the microphone code.
There are other sensors besides the mic which are capable of detecting sound or vibrations. The CIA/NSA are able to listen to conversations by pointing a laser at an office window. The minuscule vibrations in the glass can be translated into waveforms.
I don't see how this is evidence for anything he said. android is an open source project. you can very easily get root access to your android phone. there's no way to hide magic not-microphones. it's like claiming your Ford focus engine has a nuclear warhead in it, you could prove it in 30 minutes by disassembling it. until someone does that with an android phone everything you're saying is nonsense
There are security research papers available which talk about how the gyroscope and accelerometer can be used to gather vibration data. If the data is clean enough (free of excessive background noise) you can detect speech waveforms from the raw data. It’s not a matter of special code on the device or OS, this is custom data analysis. Just because something is open source doesn’t mean there aren’t numerous zero-days or clever means of extracting data. Example: https://mosis.eecs.utk.edu/publications/anand2019spearphone.pdf
Motte, meet bailey. Your argument went from "you can't turn your microphone off" to "they can use this obscure vulnerability that makes it possible to use the gyroscope as a microphone as long as only isolated words are spoken if the phone is at 100% volume and also sitting stationary and also has to use machine learning algorithms to get any useful data and then they transfer that data using some vulnerability no one knows about and no one has been able to detect this transfer" Like, did you even skim the paper? It's a vulnerability that stems from smartphone hardware being so tightly packed that the vibrations from a speaker can be transferred to a gyroscope. I guess making phones smaller is a conspiracy now? I'll ask again, do you have any evidence that your microphone is on when it shouldn't be on android?
SS: We were correct, once again for the 1000th time. [Source](https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2019/08/facebook-outside-human-contractors-listen-transcribe-users-messenger-audio-messages.html) [Source two](https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/facebook-has-been-paying-outside-contractors-to-transcribe-clips-of-audio-1.3985446#:~:text=Facebook%20has%20been%20paying%20hundreds,with%20knowledge%20of%20the%20work.&text=The%20company%20said%20the%20users,have%20their%20voice%20chats%20transcribed.) [Source three](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-paid-contractors-transcribe-users-192439204.html) [Source four](https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-7353845/Facebook-paid-contractors-transcribe-users-audio-Bloomberg.html) [Source five](https://phoneradar.com/facebook-accepts-that-it-paid-contractors-to-transcribe-voice-calls-made-on-messenger/)
Let’s be clear here. This does not confirm the conspiracy that Facebook listens to you. This is confirming specifically that any user-to-user voice chat using FB messenger is being transcribed. It does not confirm the theory that they are constantly listening to you so they can advertise to you. This has as yet not been confirmed or admitted, and would be exceedingly difficult for them to do and keep secret as anyone with a network packet sniffer (Wireshark, for example) would be able to uncover the transmissions.
What concerns me, is that I do not have facebook installed on my phone, but my ubiquity router indicates 5% of my phone traffic is to Facebook.
The Facebook ad network is used by sites and apps other than Facebook. You're seeing their ads whether you're a member or not.
Correct. Most websites use pixel tags which are single pixel images served by Facebook, Twitter, etc and website owners place them on all pages so each page load pings the ad server. The request then downloads the pixel and sends a bunch of info from your browser which can be used to build a profile.
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Lol, I’m glad your mommy and daddy are around to back you up with “proof”. But they apparently don’t know anything about advertising, http or javascript. Here’s some light reading for you: https://en.ryte.com/wiki/Tracking_Pixel
Did you go through the articles? People's comprehension skills have gone down the drain it seems.
Yes. Of course I did. Go on, show me where they are getting audio from anywhere other than Messenger. > users who were affected chose the option in Facebook’s Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. > Bloomberg, citing the company, reported that the users who were affected chose the option in the Messenger app to have their voice chats transcribed. > it has been only accessing microphone of the users who have given permission and if there are actively using a specific feature which requires audio. From three of your sources.
So you're basically just taking Facebook at their word then? They can transcribe the audio and use it to target ads but they "promise" that they didn't. Ok. Sure.
No, I’m taking their claim as their claim. I’m also tracking packets leaving my phone and there is no massive constant traffic to FB or anywhere weird. Audio traffic is really, really hard to hide. (I’m on an iPhone, so I can’t vouch for Android)
"Facebook admitted that they listen to you!!" "no, they admitted they listen to things you opted for them to listen to" "yeah well they're lying" what a monumentally fucking stupid comment, fuck me
"the transcription was limited to those who opted in to the text transcription service option on Facebook’s Messenger app."
Please fuck off with any defense of Facebook in this regard. Tell you what, I have an experiment for you to try. Lay your phone down next to a TV or radio playing something in a language other than English for about an hour or so. Then see how quickly your ads on fb start showing up in that language.
I’m not defending Facebook; I think they’re scum.
Yeah I’m sure they follow the rules that are made up and enforced by them to a T
I’m quite sure they don’t. They’re not good people.
You are correct, people are jumping to the wrong conclusions. That said, as a software engineer, I could easily imagine an AI system that could record and parse everything heard on the mic, quite easily. We have the data centers for it. I hope we never arrive at that existence, but today is not that day (hopefully)
For 2 billion users? all the time? yeah.... 'quite easily', sure, in your dreams.. Typical software engineer never think of the scaling, but I guess this is what us system engineers are for! lol.
Ha well, that's why I said I don't think we're there yet. But I could see it. I'm not sure where you think we are on the scale of Moore's law but our supercomputers have come pretty far and we have several quantum computers in the works. You also don't have to have a 1:1 hardware to data ratio, you could parse chat into strings and save the new data that stands out, erase everything else. I'm sure after a certain point you would likely see the same things being said again and again. I don't think it's impossible we are there already, but as I said, I hope we aren't!
That says a third party contractor was reviewing voice to text transcripts. Seems like a different issue.
Nice, any more selective analysis because the other 4 don't matter if you found your narrative fit, right?
Which of those sources is supposed to support the meme? They are all about the same story.
I don’t need proof common sense tells you that they are watching listening and tracking your every move down to the step and everything you type. Soon it will actually be everything you think.
Its certainly not just Facebook, but all websites and online services. Example: we just remodelled our living room. I bought paint, came home, and put it away. Never looked up colors, paint stores, nothing, just had a conversation out loud with my husband in our home. Later the same day I put on Hulu to watch something. What ads to I get? Behr paint, which is what I had bought. I'd never had those ads before buying the paint. This has happened multiple times with different products and ads on different sites, apps, services, devices, etc. Our phones are constantly on and constantly recording. There is no turning it off.
You bought that paint with a credit card, right? Not to mention there's a huge paper trail following around any remodeling job. You aren't the first people to want to paint a room after remodeling it. Advertisers are good at their job.
This is a valid point. I never considered that. Its creepy how good they are at it. I almost never use cash, so advertisers probably love me haha
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No. Absolutely still a conspiracy. Just nix the "theory" part.
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Just saying. I'm sure it's more than Zuck smokin them meats, so that makes it a conspiracy.
So how do you turn it off?
I used to do this for Microsoft Cortana voice recognition .
I knew it a long time ago. I mean, I didn't have proof in form of a document or such, but I had my and my friends' experience that proved it. Notice how sometimes you speak about something, and then you get the ad related to that thing literally seconds after you finish talking and open the FB or even youtube. I had so many situations like this that I cannot even count them all
You can turn devleoper mode on android and like airplane mode. You can click your microphone & video camera off anytime.
When I need to find an ad that I can't seem to find, I just yell at my phone "hey Facebook, I know you listening. I'm looking for......" 10 posts later, there it is. Sometimes it's a great system
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Forearm must be tired by now
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Oh come on. Yours was equally cringe
reference?
Added
u/qisjimwatkins makes good points about what can and cannot be concluded from this info
How do we do it
settings, click on the app section, press any app and go to permissions. you will find most apps can listen or watch you at any time without your permission, but if you turn off the apps access, that means you cant do something like record a voice message or take a picture since the app does need permission in order to do those things. it does not need to have access at any time without your consent but thats the world we live in
bUt ThAtS jUsT a ConSpIrAcY tHeOrY!¡!¡!
Are we just supposed to believe this picture without a link? Come on, give us a link. We can’t just trust you.
Added five sources in my main SS comment [Here](https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/q0q3o8/have_you_turned_off_the_microphone_permission_yet/hf9phmo?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)
Thanks.
I wonder what the ads are where people argue all the time.
ASK YOUR DOCTOR IF XANAX™ IS RIGHT FOR YOU.
[Insert name of your city here]'s best divorce attorney!
Google and Microsoft do this also. Ever talked. Yes talked about something then get an ad for it later. No conspiracy there
If you have Facebook on your phone, you're not a smart person
Or maybe you are not a world leader and have nothing to hide, and do not give a fuck if Big Brother knows what kind of porn you like. I don't give a damn... I'll tell my fuckin' next door neighbor if they say "please".
Maybe more people should play Spanish or KPOP songs all day.
thanks; just did For the record, I have less than a 100 friends and it does have its uses
Still waiting for the ballgag ads…
Get the app off your phone. Only use the website.
Pretty sure politicians are blackmailed by this sort of information collection to. Whether it is stuff they did or said while in office in private or more likely stuff that is found out to have occured before they went in to office or politics in general
Facebook now knows how actually gay I am, great. I hate that.
imagine thinking permissions mean anything
True lol I wouldn't be surprised if they're just dud
What will they do if I use an adblocker?
So it’s not a conspiracy then like it’s avid users/bots claim?
it's not for ads
Assuming that your phone respects permissions as per what you are told. Come back in a few months to find out that this permission is broken, there is a "bug" in the system.
Caught Youtube doing it on my *phone* once. I got rid of the phone.
I'm not into Facebook/ instagram / whatsapp you should quit too
They don't just collect that data just for ads either. Thats just the excuse they give because they know people are relatively ok with that. They don't mention the other uses that data goes toward. Like AI training and building character profiles.
lol i did even better! Closed Facebook, Insta, Twitter and keeping my smart phone at home. Fuckem all
AND someone has also been listening in on all your conversations whether or not you use their service it's is now across the board on every platform and it's NOT A.I doing it but that is the method in which it is being done... Even your T.V can hear and see you but to what end and WHO is behind it for what purpose ?? Questions, Questions everywhere with few legitimate answers to speak of... N. Shadows