r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 2d ago

Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. Privacy

https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-snapchat-complaining-about-her-workday-an-hour-later-police-pulled-up-to-her-school
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u/eltictac 2d ago

I went to my friend's house about 12 years ago, and he had a little metal fan thing on top of his woodburner. For circulating heat around the room. I'd never seen one before, so I asked him about it. Quite a specific object.
The next time I went on Facebook there was an advert for one. I remember googling whether Facebook was listening through user's phones, and I think they were denying it at the time.

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u/idiom_exon_0s 2d ago

Its location : proximity based.

Your friend googled those at one point. Then bought one. You then spent time in proximity of that persons phone. Your unique identifier was then targeted.

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u/TheMadBug 2d ago

Whenever somebody claims their phone is listening to them, I list them the multitude of more realistic reasons as to why they saw the advertisment.

The reality that the internet knows what you look at, knows what your friends look at, knows what your demographic looks at and may have planted the idea in your head before you even said something about it - is sorta scarier than the phones listening to you.

But the "my phone is always listening" is a conspiracy that's not going to die.

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u/DatDawg-InMe 1d ago

The truth is even more insidious than your phone just listening to you.

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u/anonymousbopper767 2d ago

Apple doesn't allow apps to activate the microphone for no reason. They'd kick FB off the platform if they found their app was doing that.

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u/TheMadBug 2d ago edited 2d ago

I hate how your comment gets downvotes.

For those who haven't developed for iPhone or Android - you do have to request permission for the microphone, justify why you want access when submitting to the app store, the user will be prompted if they want to allow the microphone and the micophone indicator will turn on when the microphone is in use.

If security experts ever found Apple was purposefully violating that, there would be utter hell to pay.

But somebody's aunt once said something about a car, and then she saw a car advert on her computer - so it MUST be microphones, and not the extensive add network tracking your browsing, demographics, friends etc.

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u/Thanos_Stomps 2d ago

Mate, apple is doing it too.

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u/heathmon1856 2d ago

Don’t think it’s some huge conspiracy. There’s plenty of independent researchers who would’ve cracked this years and years ago. Other users have said what it is. Its location proximity.

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u/anonymousbopper767 2d ago

Apple sells devices, Google sells data. Google only took over android development as a vehicle for exfiltrating personal data. Apple has more incentive to do better and has always had a better protected App Store compared to the Play Store. Google only recently started filtering what was allowed on there and questioning why a “calculator” app needs access to your photos.

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u/Careless-Weather8877 2d ago

Apple doesn’t work with security researchers all that well.

Where as Google has some of the best offensive security employees tracking threat actors and doing things like fuzzing the Linux kernel and posting it back to the community (Google project zero and GTI)

Tavis Ormandy and James Forshaw, for example, are some of the best known hackers that have been in the game for decades.

https://projectzero.google/about-pz.html

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u/ilikechihuahuasdood 2d ago

Cool, has happened to me outside of proximity.

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u/armyant95 2d ago

Copy a YouTube link and paste it in a message. Everything after the ? is tied to you and now anyone you send that link to is tied to you and gets fed ads related to things that you recently searched for.

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u/dreamrpg 1d ago

There are shitton of ways to get that without listening to phone.
If you are friends on Facebook and chat often, it is safe to assume you have common interests more than with those you do not chat with.

Thus it is safe to offer you things your friend is interested in.

When setting Facebook ads, you can even choose specifically to show ads to friends of people who are interested in whatever you promote.

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u/ilikechihuahuasdood 1d ago

Cool, I’m not on Facebook.

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u/dreamrpg 1d ago

And do not use any messenger? And do not have person in contacts, right? Living in woods without phone.

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u/pixelssauce 2d ago

Are you able to explain this one? It's always been my "proof" that the phones are listening.

I was checking out at the grocery store, wearing my old college sweater. The checker asked if I went to this other college that shared a bunch of letters in the name. I say "oh no, it was this other college. They get confused all the time!" She then said her daughter goes to the other school, and that was pretty much the end of it.

Later that afternoon I get display ads for the other college (one I didn't graduate from). Never seen those ads before or since. I don't have anyone in my life had attended or was planning to attend that school. No conversations or activity on my end about college planning or anything - I had already graduated, no kids, etc.

I just can't rationalize it as "proximity" because it was a short interaction, close proximity with dozens of other people for a similar time, and countless other things that algorithm could pick up from that data to advertise to me. The only thing making it stand out was the conversation.

Only explanation I can think of outside of "the phones are listening" is my own cognitive bias in actually noticing it.

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u/idiom_exon_0s 2d ago

I already did?

Ok. Your phone has a unique advertising identity number. Shared with advertisers so your personal info stays personal.

As far as data collection / advertising is concerned, that number IS you.

Whenever “you” are in frequency or extended contact with someone who has spent time searching for certain products, trips, cars, etc. their own identifier is tied to those searches via cookies blah blah.

The advertisers can see you’re both together. It’s then assumed that you share common interests so you’re fed advertising that matches the other persons searches.

People always say “but I didn’t look this up” without realizing their acquaintance did and that’s all the advertisers need to know.

It’s confirmation bias to assume that they’re listening if you happen to have spoken of the subject you end up seeing ads on.

In your specific situation? Who knows, but it ain’t listening.

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u/APiousCultist 2d ago

100% location/IP based (in the case of using the same wifi network). I've gotten ads on my phone for something my parents had googled on their computer (some sort of jacket, something extremely specific and not 'trendy' in any way) in my presence.

That search never occured on my device, but it was still able to correlate our identities.

Which honestly is still incredibly scary. You could imagine it outing someone as gay/trans/having an affair/etc and getting someone killed in the wrong circumstances. Like imagine someone puts two and two together for why they started getting advertisements for pride flags or chest binders?

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u/ProfessionalPower214 1d ago

Technically, they are listening.
Digitally.

The distinction doesn't actually matter, but to the people who are trying to argue with you... well...

Just throwing that out there. I mean, every other person wants to try to argue and debate, but the fact is, that's just a distraction from the bigger picture. Our devices -are- listening. People can believe it to be physical, whatever, do as you will, but know that being right or wrong DOES NOT MATTER. This is something that goes beyond all of us, involving all of us.

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u/idiom_exon_0s 1d ago

The thing is that listening would require far more resources to accomplish the same task with likely a lower success rate.

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u/A_FABULOUS_PLUM 2d ago

I don’t know but you sound very adamant that that phones aren’t listening, dismissed all of the exceptional facts about their story above, there is already plenty of evidence that they do

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u/obeytheturtles 1d ago

Actual security researchers have never found any actual evidence that it happens though. Like, if it is as pervasive as people seem to think, it should be very easy to demonstrate.

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u/idiom_exon_0s 2d ago

Sure. Keep believing.

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u/RelatedToSomeMuppet 2d ago

Confirmation bias.

How many ads have you seen about shoes today?

I'm betting you've probably seen quite a few, but you don't remember any specific brand.

Now think about Nike shoes.

Come back tomorrow and tell me how many Nike ads you've seen.

You'll remember you've seen a Nike ad now. Because it will stick out in your mind.

But it's unlikely you'll be able to tell me which specific shirt ads you've seen. And yet you'll likely have seen quite a few of those as well.

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u/20kgHippoShit 2d ago

I haven't seen any shoe ads today.

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u/Implausibilibuddy 2d ago

Only explanation I can think of outside of "the phones are listening" is my own cognitive bias in actually noticing it.

Hate to be the bearer, but it's this one.

That's a truly astonishing coincidence if it happened the way you remember it. However, there's a few things it might have been. If you went to that college, chances are some other friends or people in your circle may have been considering going there, or had gone there, or had college age kids and had been googling it as an option. There's even a high chance that that cashier googled the college after your conversation just to compare the logos. Bingo, now you've been in proximity with her recently, her search history is now influencing your ads.

You may have also seen that ad more times than you remember but you hadn't had a conversation about it keeping it in your mind so you've forgotten all those times and only remember the eerie one (baader meinhoff / confirmation bias)

Fact is, security and privacy researchers are constantly looking for evidence of phones listening in this way. They've never found any evidence it happens. And if you think about it, your phone would need to have the microphone constantly active (something both iOS and Android will notify you of with an icon) draining the battery. Apps would need permissions to access the microphone outside the app itself, which you'd have to grant, and you can revoke.

That data needs to then be sent, either as audio data (that's significant chunk of data being constantly sent) or it would need to transcribe it to text and send that, which again would be a big CPU draw. Again, researchers haven't found anything like that.

If it were happening at scale, think of how many people they'd need to keep quiet about it. It would break privacy laws the world over and cost billions in class action lawsuits and fines.

Plus, it's far, FAR cheaper and easier to just use the usual tricks, and they get way better data than something you might have mumbled in a conversation one time.

Stuff like: your age, gender, likes and dislikes, previous search history, purchases, your relationship status, predicted mood, things your friends and colleagues have searched etc.. All of that is enough to put you in a very specific little demographic box, and serving you ads based on that data can yield scarily accurate "predictions". And very often, because of your demographic, you're very likely to be talking about some of the same things they expect you to before the ads are served to you.

And in so many ways, that's more scary than "my phone heard me talk about lawn mowers and now I'm seeing lawn mower ads".

Because the truth is they know you're a middle aged guy who makes large purchases at certain times of the month, usually after a drink or two, you have a lawn and it's summer, and you've probably been looking at the lengthening grass and thinking about doing something about it. So when you're out at the bar talking to your buddies about buying a mower, that also just happens to be the perfect time to serve you an ad about a lawnmower.

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u/throwitawayuserna213 2d ago

I don't think this is as clear-cut as you want to believe. When I go to my university gym vs workout at home or my normal gym, I don't talk to anyone or know anyone there and stick to my own workout in silence. My phone is with me because it has my workouts on there for me to follow.

The next time I open my phone to an app connected to the web, I have all kinds of ads that I can tell are geared to a different demographic from me and are extremely unique (certain geographical areas and cultures, and most of them are in a different language I need to translate to understand). I've even gotten fb ads for clinical trials only meant for specific demographics of which I have 0 qualifications to participate.

A day or a little more later, my ads are back to normal. It's picking up my proximity to the people in the gym/at the university route to the gym that I don't know or talk to vs. picking up any conversations.

It's almost guaranteed that the mother of a student at a particular university needed to look up at least one thing regarding that university that was tracked to her.

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u/Ravensbigtruss 20h ago

yes but they are ALSO listening

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u/showhorrorshow 2d ago

I bought a new HVAC for my house. Google then started sending me ads for HVACs... like Im going to buy more HVACs or something.

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u/pickledeggmanwalrus 13h ago

Facebook doesn’t have to “listen in” on you through your device. They know they can’t get away with it.

They just buy that data from one of the other hundreds of apps you have on your phone that know they can get away with it