People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you
People left seriously creeped out after woman shares how to find out everything Google knows about you
Google collects your data to target ads - and this is how much the tech giant knows about you.
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What I want to know is why when I'm talking to my wife in the car about buying new shoes do I get a YouTube ad that evening about new shoes, when I never got that kind of ad before.
Are our phones listening to us while we talk in the car, and then ads are generated from that?
I'd really like to know the answer to that question.
Edit: fixed typo, shoes, not shows.
What are the odds than anyone in the household searched for the shows? Targeting ads to all devices on the same IP or even devices that have previously been on the same network happens.
I was able to predict that my mom had been researching “bunion shoes” after I started seeing ads, seemingly randomly, for them not long after she came to my house to visit.
It's not even just that, humans a incredibly predictable and that predictability is able to be microtargeted based on trends and past activity of an individual.
I agree in an abstract, but shoes do not wear at the same rate each year, especially when you buy different shoes each time. My shoe purchases, for instance, vary by a number of years.
It’s not even just that, humans a incredibly predictable and that predictability is able to be microtargeted based on trends and past activity of an individual.
I literally let years go by between buying shoes, no kidding. So I don't think that what you described would cover my specific case.
Especially out of the blue, and not shown ads for that at all before, and exactly around the same time when that discussion comes up in a moving vehicle.
(As an aside, and in case you're curious, when it comes time to buy new shoes, I usually buy two or three pairs of the same shoe, and then stick the other ones in the closet (usually buy at a really good sales price). Then when the first ones wear out I throw them away, and grab the next pair out of the closet.)
You just described a pattern, though.
You just described a pattern, though.
From where I see it, there is no pattern of purchasing shoes there, unless you truly expect Google AI/servers to track you multi-years long (with the required CPU and storage requirements needed to do so), to establish an unique shoe purchasing pattern, instead of what they more likely are doing, which is looking at recent online and microphone activity.
AKA, Occam's Razor.
And also, how would Google know beforehand, that I will walk into a shoe store and buy shoes, if I didn't do any search for them ahead of time online?
What are the odds than anyone in the household searched for the shows?
It's just me and my wife, and we were both in the car together.
Also, I meant to say shoes, not shows. The voice-to-text doesn't always get me perfectly, and sometimes I miss the typos it creates.
It's usually not a case of the phone listening but, more creepily, that your behavior before and after talking to your wife about new shoes signaled that you want to buy new shoes.
Ad algorithms are surprisingly perceptive about signals that aren't obvious.
that your behavior before and after talking to your wife about new shoes signaled that you want to buy new shoes.
There was no previous or after behavior.
We were in a car, long road trip, I mentioned needing to buy new shows during the trip, and when I got home late that evening YouTube was serving me up ads for shoes on my PC. No searches was done before or after the trip (as I mentioned elsewhere, I just go to a store and buy multiple boxes of the same kind of sneakers/shoes on sale).
It doesn't have to be your searches, it could have just been the fact that your phone recognized you were on a road trip and that people in your ad cohort tend to want to buy shoes while on road trips.
I've worked in algorithmic ad space before and I can say that I've never seen evidence of phones listening on conversations but I have seen plenty of evidence from years ago where all your other data is used to form a terrifyingly accurate profile.
We used to do dead reckoning and gps speed gait profiling and we would only need about a weeks worth of GPS data to know height, weight, sex, where you live, where you work, where your kids go to school etc.
We would take that data and cross reference that with data broker info to form a profile, put you in an ad cohort bin, and serve you up as a platform for ad matching services to match to ad campaigns, which get even further targeted.
Millions of dollars spent hyper targeting you but 99 times out of 100 the inaccurate campaign is paying more so they get the adspace but the one time the actual low paying hyper focused campaign gets through it's always scary how accurate it is.
tl;dr: Ad companies don't need to listen to your conversation to know what you want to buy, ads are usually inaccurate because the inaccurate campaign paid more
It doesn’t have to be your searches, it could have just been the fact that your phone recognized you were on a road trip and that people in your ad cohort tend to want to buy shoes while on road trips.
Are you f'ing kiddig me? You really going to go with that excuse? Somehow by driving from one city to another city on the freeway that tells Google that I want to buy shoes? Come on, that stretches credulity.
Also, sure is weird that that has never happened to me on any of the other times I also drove the same route over the years.
I am skeptical about listening not only because it was not proven, but also because almost the exact same result is achievable via much, much simpler and omnipresent means.
I am skeptical about listening not only because it was not proven,
This old article from Vice seems to have proven it, back in 2018.
And their conclusion was completely wrong.
Because unless you’re a journalist, a lawyer, or have some kind of role with sensitive information, the access of your data is only really going to advertisers. If you’re like everyone else, living a really normal life, and talking to your friends about flying to Japan, then it’s really not that different to advertisers looking at your browsing history.
These days, a private conversation about pregnancy, abortion, voting, or your feelings about geopolitical stuff like Gaza or Ukraine could absolutely be used against you, depending on where you live.
Yeah, I didn't like that part of the article either, but then again that was back in 2017/18 before the today's political environment.
You're definitely right.
It most likely is. And if it's not your phone, then it's your car (assuming it has been built in the last few years)
It most likely is
Instead of guessing, you people need to learn to use Wireshark and find out for yourself.
No, they don't just listen all the time with an open mic and just send all audio to the cloud. Anyone in cybersecurity would definitely notice that and sound the alarm. There's probably tens of thousands of people watching what these companies and their tech do all day long.
They can get all the data they need through other means, like trackers. Most of us aren't consciously aware of the metric shitton of bread crumbs we all leave behind on the net.
Wireshark may or may not help you here. The proposed mechanism is abusing the wake words, which are processed locally on the device. Each marketing wake word could be processed, set a flag and go back to sleep with no network activity. Periodically a bit array of flags would be sent to the server with any other regular traffic (checking for notifications, perhaps). The actual audio never gets sent. I'm not saying that Facebook actually does this, but it's a reasonable explanation for the behaviour seen in the Vice article.
No, they don’t just listen all the time with an open mic and just send all audio to the cloud. Anyone in cybersecurity would definitely notice that and sound the alarm.
How would they though? The mic is already known to be always on, and what the servers/back-end are doing with the mic input data is not viewable/known by us on the outside. So how would those 'cybersecurity' people know?
If you're monitoring the traffic, and you start speaking, and you suddenly see packets spewing out of a device every time you talk, that's a good indication. There's indirect methods to analyze it without necessarily being able to see the actual data.
Poking around the PCB with an oscilloscope to see electrical signals will probably be useful too.
If you’re monitoring the traffic, and you start speaking, and you suddenly see pac6kers spewing out of a device every time you talk, that’s a good indication. There’s indirect methods to analyze it without necessarily being able to see the actual data.
Its already established that the mic always hot, and that data is always being sent to the server.
What they do with the data is not seeable by us. That is the point being discussed, do they listen in to conversations and market off of that data to us.
Its already established that the mic always hot, and that data is always being sent to the server.
Tell me, how have you established this? What were your methods?
Its already established that the mic always hot, and that data is always being sent to the server.
Tell me, how have you established this? What were your methods?
By calling out for the Google assist, without having pushed any button first. It's always listening for the activate/initiate key phrase.
That doesn't mean it's sending anything out through the network connection. The wake word is locally processed.
That doesn’t mean it’s sending anything out through the network connection. The wake word is locally processed.
Doesn't mean it's not, either.
This old article from Vice seems to have proven it, back in 2018.
This entire article is full of absolutely nothing but speculation with no sources and poor experimentation without proper knowledge in the field, software, or equipment. No technical analysis at all. This person kind of has no clue and is taking ignorant shots in the dark to try to confirm preexisting notions. The "experiment" they ran sounds like something my mother would do and then get all bent out of shape and frantically call me about it.
I want the 5 minutes back I wasted reading that.
It most likely is. And if it’s not your phone, then it’s your car (assuming it has been built in the last few years)
Yeah, that's really creepy. I would only want the phone to listen when I actually ask it a question, not 24/7.
I would only want the phone to listen when I actually ask it a question, not 24/7.
If the phone does not listen 24/7, then how does it know when you are asking a question? It should discard all information until the wake up word is called in theory. Only way it could work if you have to press a button to start listening to your question. This was the case in the past, however people wanted to ask questions while showering or something since they introduced this “improvement”.
If the phone does not listen 24/7, then how does it know when you are asking a question?
I pushed the microphone button on the keyboard editor when I want the microphone to listen to me.
For example, when I comment here on Lemmy, I use the voice-to-text option to type out my comments, via the microphone.
It should discard all information until the wake up word is called in theory.
But even with always-on listening mode, it shouldn't actually be taking any of your data for advertising (or legal issues for that matter) and using it, unless you explicitly authorize it to do so.
And it has to be very explicit, not buried down in some long multi-page license somewhere that only a knowledgeable lawyer would be able to know and find.
Oh, and you should be able to opt-out of that mode as well.
I'm not aware of any research that's proven that phone are listening on conversations and serve ads based on that, just a bunch of anecdotal evidence. there has been some research a few years ago that proved the opposite, though.
there has been some research a few years ago that proved the opposite, though.
Could you supply a link for that article? I would very much like to read it. Also, I would want it to be a recent article, to be believable for the current conversation we're having.
just a bunch of anecdotal evidence
Well, we all are just black boxing this, as we do not have access to these corporation's servers and what data they collect.
But you have to admit, that in my case at least, Occam's Razor would definitely point you in a certain direction.
Edit: You should also take a look at this old article from Vice.
https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
this is the most recent one I know of.
you have to admit, that in my case at least, Occam’s Razor would definitely point you in a certain direction.
it points me in the direction of you either being in the demographic currently targeted by the ad provider, or you having been shown the ad before without noticing it, and only paying attention after talking about the topic, and experiencing frequency illusion afterwards.
https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
this is the most recent one I know of.
Gizmodo? 2018? Yikes.
Interesting enough, in that same article is one from Vice, which backs up what I've been stating and assuming.
Gizmodo? 2018? Yikes.
it's a summary of a paper posted here: https://recon.meddle.mobi/panoptispy/
in that same article is one from Vice, which backs up what I've been stating and assuming
do I get to say "Vice? 2018? Yikes." now?
feel free to link more up-to-date research results.
Gizmodo? 2018? Yikes.
it’s a summary of a paper posted here: https://recon.meddle.mobi/panoptispy/
Thanks for the link. Checking the bottom of it ...
© Copyright 2012-2024 by David Choffnes, Northeastern University. This work is generously supported in part by a DHS S&T contract (#FA8750-17-2-0145), a Comcast Innovation Fund grant and the Data Transparency Lab.
.. and from the paper ...
This material is based upon work supported by the DHS S&T contract FA8750-17-2-0145; the NSF under Award No. CNS-1408632, IIS-1408345, and IIS-1553088; a Security, Privacy and Anti-Abuse award from Google; a Comcast Innovation Fund grant; and a Data Trans- parency Lab grant. Any opinions, findings, and conclu- sions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of our sponsors.
Ignoring 'Gizmodo' for a moment, not sure if its an unbiased paper or not (its a bit 'sus'), and the date is from research done in 2017 and published in 2018. Today's corporations most likely do not follow the same practices they did in 2017.
in that same article is one from Vice, which backs up what I’ve been stating and assuming
do I get to say “Vice? 2018? Yikes.” now?
Yep, you sure do, especially since it comes from the article you supplied. The point being that showing proof from 2017 does not necessarily cover today's situation.
But it definatley defines that listening in on your phone used to happen back in 2018 at least. Wish we had today's "word" on the subject.
feel free to link more up-to-date research results.
Considering I was asking you originally, you shouldn't expect one from me. I was asking you about your initial point, since you were replying to mine, and would not have if I already the information that backs up what you stated.
Hi.
I work with and for most of the major tech companies worldwide and yes, we are listening to your cell phone even when you turn off the settings.
I'm not going to provide any proof or further context. Just trust me bro.
Do a little research on Sony and “the garden”.
No. How about you summarize it for us.
I did, above.
There are several large companies that actively listen though your phone and IoT and use the collected audio to advertise to you.
Thank you for the summary.
Answer is no. Google Ads doesn't work that way. If you perceive such a coincidence, it just happened by chance or you or your wife sent out other signals that buying new shoes is a topic for you.
If you perceive such a coincidence, it just happened by chance or you or your wife sent out other signals that buying new shoes is a topic for you.
None of that happened though. It was on a long car trip, no Internet web browsing done, and no previous searches done from home.
The only time shoes were relevant was a verbal discussion in the vehicle.
Still a high chance for a coincidence. And the human mind tends to see patterns to structure the world. Shoe advertisement is not particularly rare in the web.
Still a high chance for a coincidence.
How? Its an isolated environment where the conversation is being had.
And the human mind tends to see patterns to structure the world.
Its an explicit viewing of a commercial of a type that is not normally seen. Not exactly a pattern.
Shoe advertisement is not particularly rare in the web.
I never saw any on YouTube until the evening of that conversation. /shrug
Coincidence in the sense that the ad that you saw had absolutely no connection to your talk. It was just a random ad. No all advertisements are targeted precisely. I work in the field and a lot of campaigns on YouTube are just targeted to a selected YT-channel, or a topic like sport videos, or maybe an age group. That's all. You see an ad because you watched a channel. Like on TV.
Coincidence in the sense that the ad that you saw had absolutely no connection to your talk. It was just a random ad.
I'm willing to admit that's possible, but when I haven't seen any for a couple of years (truly), and then see one the same evening, that seems like more than just a coincidence to me. /shrug