Is my smartphone listening to me?
The other day my wife was talking on her iphone to a friend about how she needs to get new tires. Within the next ten seconds, a text was sent to her about a sale on tires. Was her iPhone listening to her conversation and targeting her with ads? There could have been an app open on her phone recording her conversation. When she told me what happened, I said that it was probably Facebook which by this time knows more about her than anyone. Facebook denies listening to our conversations, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they are selling this information to a 3rd party.
This week Microsoft admitted in their new privacy policy that humans are listening to some Skype and Cortana recordings. Google recently stopped listening to conversations on Google Assistant. This got me thinking that maybe it wasn’t Facebook. There is an Amazon Alexa in the other room. Amazon has admitted that employees listen to customer voice recordings from Echo and other Alexa-enabled smart speakers.
There was recently an unsolved murder and prosecutors were trying to gain access to this data to help solve the case. CBS reported, “a judge has ruled that New Hampshire authorities investigating the murders of two women can examine recordings made by an Amazon Echo speaker with the Alexa voice assistant.”
Big technology companies are spying on us and listening to our private conversations. They are using this data to sell products to you. Our devices know where ever you have been and how long you have been there. If you want to know this information go into your iPhone: Settings, Privacy, Location Services, System Services (scroll to the bottom), Significant Locations, and there you will find a history of various places that you have travelled and how long you spent there. When I looked at my own local data, I had all the evidence to show that my wife is right and that I spend too much time at the office. The smartphones stored all the dates and times and it even knows how long it took me to drive to the office. As a joke, I could easily turn the evidence against her and I will know where she shopped in the last few years! 🙂
There is no limit as to how this data will be used in the future. If you are worried about privacy, there are ways to protect yourself and limit big tech from recording your life. You can minimize the amount of data that is collected on you smartphone by turning off these settings. The downside to this is that many apps will not work as well.
Maybe it wasn’t Facebook or Amazon listening to her conversation. It could have been one of the games that one of the kids downloaded on her iPhone and they are secretly selling this data to advertisers. It’s safe to say that we didn’t buy the tires from that text. My wife said something that got my attention when the tire sale text was first sent to her, “If you’re listening to me, F$@K Y$O.” 🙂
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