You’re not wrong to give the benefit out the doubt and believe their PR person isn’t lying.
But I’m not inclined to give that benefit of the doubt. I don’t trust these folks farther than I can throw them. I don’t, myself, need proof, to believe they would try this crap.
And this is definitely evidence.
But without hard evidence I don’t believe random apps are just recording clandestinely in the background.
I certainly do. Malware attempts to record you is old news.
We have always assumed voice was off the table for practical reasons - voice recordings are expensive to decode and correlated usefully.
Cox has particularly deep pockets, which makes this interesting.
I do actually agree, this really could just have been a vendor bullshitting. Normally I would say Occam’s razor points there. But Occam’s razor points the other way, to me, when I consider that basically everyone I know has experienced a voice targeted ad.
The big ugly question is which apps are recording voices?
It might just be name squatting spyware. I haven’t seen confirmation that any do this, and I always assumed it was too expensive. Maybe it still is, but my guess is Cox isn’t the only ones who got that sale offer.
The creepy part is, if you’re not inclined to take Google, Amazon, and Meta at their word, then one wonders what other apps are recording voices…
Here’s the conspiracy part:
The conspiracy emerges when we look at these data points and squint a little.
Edit: I think many of y’all are in denial about how much you shouldn’t trust Meta apps on your phones.
We know Meta wants to use things you say to build an ad profile. We have evidence they don’t have any moral qualms about doing it. We know they have unfathomable terms of service and closed source apps.
And now we know there’s been at least one closed door conversation about buying the recordings that supposedly don’t exist.
I don’t have proof but I also don’t have any apps by Meta on my phone.
Security researchers would’ve noticed this.
They did notice. Malicious apps that use everything they can to spy on you are old news.
To your point - this isn’t confirmation that any of the big players are listening directly. That would probably have been caught by security researchers, although it would be really difficult in Google’s or Amazon’s case, as they run proprietary software at a very low level.
The news here is two fold;
Cox got caught buying that data, and when confronted about it, Google, Amazon, and Meta all failed to deny that they also buy that data from those malicious app makers.
This is strong evidence that someone is routinely collecting that data. That’s news. We’ve suspected for awhile that, at minimum, the malware apps do. Occam’s razor says at minimum, we should now assume many malware apps are using microphone to collect speech and submit it elsewhere for analysis.
The unprovable part of this that smells much worse is: a kid in a basement writing malware does not have the computing power to turn tons of raw voice recordings into useful correlated data.
That kid needs an ally with a lot of computing power. Google, Meta, and Amazon all have a motive here and have the necessary computing power.
And all three worded their denials pretty carefully, I noticed.
In summary: Google, Amazon and Meta all deny that they directly access your microphone, and all three failed to actually deny purchasing voice data from third party apps that definitely do use your microphone and pair that with your ad targeting profile.
This is getting more attention because an internal slide deck from Cox Media Group was leaked. Based on the nature of leaks, it’s safe to assume that Cox isn’t the only organization up to this, they were just the least careful.
So yeah, they’re listening to anyone who isn’t incredibly careful what apps they install and what permissions they give those apps.
Exactly as we all have suspected for years, while they gaslight us promising that they definitely don’t.
Notice that they’re still denying it, and trust that as you will.
Let’s see how he union negotiations go.
They have plenty of leverage. WoW runs on centralized servers which cannot maintain themselves, and are likely still under constant forms of Cyberattack, waiting for a serious vulnerability.
The work of these innovative new AIs is Coming Soon! to a VHS $3.00 bin near you!
Asshole lawsuits and “day one patches” finally killed my love for the Switch.
I don’t feel good about sending money to Nintendo anymore. And I don’t feel confident that my physical media Switch cartridges will stand the test of time after Nintendo shuts the patch servers down.
But I’ll always appreciate the innovation. I’m not buying games for it anymore, but it’s a fun part of my home game setup.
The assholes pushing this crap sure are lucky they outnumber us…(\sarcasm)
MineTest is an open source game engine that allows running various open source Minecraft clones.
Would you trust this “wallet” tho lol
Hell no. I just kicked Google out of my life for the same crap. Ugh. But I’ll laugh too, because it’s either that or cry.
I wouldn’t trust them as a lone voice on something, but if other groups come to the same conclusion, sure.
As a Privacy nerd, I agree with the conclusions in the article, for what it’s worth. We do see a lot of “privacy” law proposals lately that are anything but.
I don’t think things will get better, on this front, until the average person better understands privacy rights and risks.
I can’t say I’m shocked. But I am disappointed.
You’re not alone in that.
I also reread your comments sometimes with a deep sense is satisfaction.
(I’m kidding. Although I did check your comment history to make sure you weren’t a monster before even making that joke.)
True. I don’t post the license prominently, but my comments are Creative Commons, Attribution, Share Alike
Okay, I’m actually kidding about misunderstanding which bit of my comment your reply was to.
Yes, it’s great that MineTest is open source! And the mod community is impressive.
My comments are pure Internet gold. I’m actually only here to read my own comments. It helps me remember how brilliant and humble I am.
My posts help people discover MineTest. It’s pretty great, and it’s free.
That’s heartbreaking. Radio Shack was so fun, while it lasted.
Netflix can’t do what got them to the top.
They can’t grow that way but they could easily hold on and remain profitable, popular and successful.
They were well on their way to enjoying “Kleenex” or “Oreo” stable market success, but their leadership and shareholders apparently aren’t satisfied with winning.
I’ll take “Organizations that made it to the top by doing something different, only to fall under leadership that doesn’t understand what made them successful and descend into ruins” for 200, Alex.
Seriously, Jeopardy team - this is a rich category:
Neat.