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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2842 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for December 7, 2025

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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By now that claim about smartphones passively listening in 24/7 for ad targeting is quite old. Any conclusive evidence either for or against?

I've had a bunch of "weird" occurrences like discussing some thing with my wife that we haven't ever mentioned before and suddenly we start getting ads about this exactly subject, but I can't call it a conclusive evidence, as it could be either of us looked up something related before or during talking about it and just forgot about it. I'm pretty sure it's not too hard to make a clean experiment if one wanted to, but I am too lazy to do anything like that.

IDK, but when I’ve been speaking Spanish a bunch I get a ton of ads for soccer.

Another anecdote: I started getting ads for divorce attorneys on my work computer shortly after posting this from home.

They are passively monitoring, but not listening.

They have permissions for location, gyro, website activity (facebook pixel) and know who you interact with. That's more than good enough to serve you ads. Hell, they're stronger signals for your interests than your audio.

My cousin works for Verizon and says no. He says that what's going on is that Facebook is just showing you the same ads as your friends, which could happen if they search for something you were talking about and you don't. There's selection bias here, too; nobody accounts for all the times they talked about something and weren't shown an ad for it.

So this was my stance for the longest time, but I've had a few instances like the following that are just too suspicious:

I do not have Facebook on my phone. I was talking to someone at work whose number I do not have, he was talking about the problems in a vacation destination I have never gone to in a country I was last in before Facebook existed, I was not considering going there so I had not been googling anything about it (we were talking about it because of a patient mentioning it), he was not considering going there either, just explaining that he thought it was ass.

Then when I went home I got advertisements for hotel rooms in that city. I do not regularly get hotel advertisements.

Facebook shouldn't have had anything to cue off of.

Presumably Facebook knows my phone number, detected it in proximity to his phone number, and served a targeted ad. It's possible that he furiously googling the place afterwards and it served similar ads to people in his phone book and people with recent text messages etc but that's nearly just as bad.

Facebook shouldn't have had anything to cue off of.

Except the data that the FB / Messenger app transmitted, whatever sites had FB pixel, anything you accessed (voluntarily or in the background) that communicates with FB and so on.

There is simply no mechanism for the FB app to listen to the microphone of your phone because the phone OS just won't stream audio to it unless explicitly enabled (including the visible indicator etc). To do that FB would have to abuse a zero day exploit in the phone OS for years without anyone catching on.

OK thanks for this because I was convinced they were listening to me after an incident. My friend is a whiskey snob and wanted to try this one specific whiskey, but only one bar in town was serving it and it was too much money to justify buying a whole bottle. So he took me there and we mentioned the brand a bunch and the next day I got ads for it. I was absolutely paranoid about it because I had never heard of this alcohol before and couldn't think of any way the algorithm would have decided to target me beyond listening to my phone. My friend looking it up and facebook making a connection makes way more sense.

The amount of data and effort it would require to a. constantly be passively listening and recording and b. uploading and analyzing it is simply too vast to be a workable conspiracy (at this point, anyways). It would simultaneously be too noticeable and not worth the cost.

The conspiracies you have to worry about are those that would be inconspicuous, simple, and easily-automated. Odds are you are far too unimportant to warrant active monitoring.

Modern operating systems inform you when the microphone is on. This claim requires that Facebook et al have a backdoor that's never been detected in all these years.

The FB pixel localhost sidechannel exfiltration got caught within a year or so, but the researchers that found it realized that Yandex had been using a similar technique for 7 years without getting caught.

That was a clever use of Internet permissions, which were requested by the apps, rather than a covert usage of permissions that the apps weren't supposed to have. There's a difference between using a permission creatively and using a permission that you're not supposed to have.

Does this difference actually matter? 99.99% of users will click "allow" on any permission a "trusted" app (like facebook or browser) would ask them for, and would never realize any of those deep technical aspects.

If you've got a green microphone chip in your notifications bar because Facebook is listening to you, then it's not really a mystery if Facebook is listening to you or not and this conversation would be over.

However, this doesn't happen and nobody has produced an explanation of how it could happen without the OS notifying the user that the microphone is enabled.

Nobody checks any notifications bars when your phone is in your pocket or sitting on your table. A tiny green dot is hard to miss. Also, I am not entirely convinced there's no way to turn on the microphone (hardware) without showing the green dot (software). It's be very easy to lay all these doubt to rest - make a hardware microphone mute switch, that physically (electrically) disconnects the microphone hardware. I'd trust that. Nobody does it though.

Nobody checks any notifications bars when your phone is in your pocket or sitting on your table.

On Android, apps can't turn on the microphone at all while running in the background. Accessing it while running in the foreground requires a permanent notification while the foreground process is running. To start a background process, the app must be open, so it can't start a background process while the phone is at rest.

In any case, Android maintains an audit log of all microphone accesses. It would, again, be trivial for people to demonstrate that the Facebook app is accessing the mic while the phone is locked or at rest. Somehow, nobody has produced such evidence.

A tiny green dot is hard to miss.

I agree it's hard to miss, especially because (at least on Android) everything in the notification bar is monochrome (except I guess a low battery indicator).

Also, I am not entirely convinced there's no way to turn on the microphone (hardware) without showing the green dot (software).

This is the second time this week that someone has responded to my comment with an objection that I already covered in a grandparent.

This claim requires that Facebook et al have a backdoor that's never been detected in all these years.

I expect not reading from plebbit but I feel the bare minimum of engagement on this forum should be reading the conversation you are joining.

It's especially perplexing since you thought I was talking about granting microphone permissions at first, but somehow that's not a load bearing part of your argument and your confidence that I'm wrong seems unaffected.

It's be very easy to lay all these doubt to rest - make a hardware microphone mute switch, that physically (electrically) disconnects the microphone hardware. I'd trust that.

Hmm, so you don't trust the microphone notification because you're not able to look at your notification bar, but you do trust a switch which may not do anything (when's the last time you disassembled your phone?) and that might get switched while your phone is in your pocket. Let's say, that's not a typical perspective among consumers.

you don't trust the microphone notification because you're not able to look at your notification bar

No, I don't trust the notification because I don't see any mechanism that prevents microphone from working while not displaying the notification, those are completely different systems, and the only thing linking them is software. Which is extremely fallible. If I break the electric circuit, I'd trust the laws of physics to prevent the microphone from working.

This claim requires that Facebook et al have a backdoor that's never been detected in all these years.

Doesn't have to be Facebook, could be google feeding some data into one of a myriad of data aggregators, and ad platforms just using the end result of that.

a switch which may not do anything

That's become known pretty quickly I imagine, it's not hard to open it and verify, I opened my phones several times despite being complete ignoramus in electronics. And it's easy to prove too, so for a phone manufacturer going through all the expense of making a fake switch would be pointless, especially given as phone manufacturers aren't those who profit from ads. OTOH, phone manufacturers do not control the software, and making fallible software is cheaper than making secure one.

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Why would you trust the Phone OS to set the electronic switch off (a physical switch isn't possible) if you don't trust the same OS to not route audio to the app without your permission?

Why a physical switch isn't possible? Looks like very basic thing, just interrupt the circuit.

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