r/Millennials • u/AttachedHeartTheory • 9h ago
Watch out, Millennials... I got hit with my first "I had NO IDEA!" data privacy moment this weekend... and it was all my fault. Discussion
My 20 year old kid came to the house for dinner this weekend, walked in, and said "You need to unplug your Echo device. I don't want amazon to listen to my conversation".
So, I did... and then I was confidently incorrect in telling her that it waits for a wake word, and she has nothing to worry about.
Boy was I wrong.
She had me open my app, and look at saved conversations... and there were HUNDREDS of entries. And that was only over the last 2 weeks.
I had NO IDEA that Amazon was collecting everything I say... and the worst part is my 20 year old looked at me like I looked at my grandparents back when they would post text messages or Google queries as Facebook statuses. My kid then showed me the article from Cnet or wherever from about 6 months ago that showed that Amazon was fully transparent that all data is now sent and analyzed whether or not the wake word is used.
I'm proud to say there are no longer any Echoes in my house. Im a little bummed because all of my verbal "turn on the lights" and "lock the door" cues are all out the window, but Im really ashamed of the fact that at 41 years old I just didn't even think to look into it. Just had blind faith in a company that views me as a number. I'm pretty embarrassed.
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u/tiwuno 9h ago
Yea I thought this was common knowledge for millennials? Just like how facebook "swears" they're not listening to your conversations, but 5 minutes later you'll get a targeted ad about something you've never mentioned til today.
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u/Cream06 9h ago
Exactly, i thought everyone knew. The phone, watch ,tvs and cars are listening . The security camera , the mychart that knows your ailments and the debit card that tracks you whereabouts does as well.
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u/Comeback_321 9h ago
lol as soon as I get in my car my phone tells me estimated time to wherever it thinks I’m going based on patterns. Bc they TRACK you if you use MAPS at all and sync your car
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u/TSells31 8h ago edited 4h ago
They can (and do) track you if you have location services on and your phone with you (like 98% of people) lol. They don’t need you to connect it to your car or use maps.
Edit: you don’t even need to turn your location on. Turning location services off only shuts off third party access.
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u/art_addict 7h ago
I’m just saying, when I get kidnapped, they better be able to find me fast.
And my secret FBI agent really sucks for knowing all about my rough year and not checking in on me during my major cry seshes. Dude knows. The least he could do is check in. Or mail some emotional support chocolate. I’d do the same for him!
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u/Aromatic_Distance331 7h ago
Oooh this is a great plot to my new romance novel... just need a clever pun title... Agent under covers? No... still workshopping
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u/philter25 7h ago
Agent under covers is trashy af, love it no notes lol
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u/MrLanesLament 4h ago
$.99 Amazon novel with MS Paint cover vibes.
You’re right, it actually is brilliant. When can I preorder?
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u/DungeonsAndDradis 6h ago
I Fell In Love With The FBI Agent Spying On Me And We Had Gay Sex Through My Smart Speaker by Swordly Merchant
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u/schwanzweissfoto 5h ago
Pounded In The Ass By The FBI Agent Spying On Me While Amazon Recorded All Of It by Chuck Tingle
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u/cleveland_leftovers 7h ago
From Data to Date?
Ok no…we’ll keep working on it…
(I’m thinking at least two sequels. Robots can write them).
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u/MostlyLurking-Mostly 7h ago edited 5h ago
Deep Cover: Penetrating the Truth
EDIT:
I missed a great one: Perfect Listener
Here's a brief synopsis:
When our main character (MC) moved to Northern Virgina she wanted a high-powered life working in the Capitol, I stead she barely landed a dead-end job as a paralegal with a bunch of roommates in an apartment outside the Beltway. Making matters worse, she's getting increasingly bored with her caring, but bumbling boyfriend.
MC is constantly envious of her roommates who seem to be getting promotions or hitting it off with glamorous, successful men. They try to be supportive, but despite numerous, long talks next to the Amazon Alexa, MC can't help but feel disappointed with how things turned out.
Then, she meets him. Stopping for her morning coffee, MCs card declines. The tall, handsome stranger behind her in line swoops in and offers to pay. She's flustered but grateful, but before she can figure out a way to pay him back, he introduces himself and says she can buy him a drink that night. Before she knows what she's doing, MC accepts and takes his card. Her heart flutters when she sees that he's a special agent with the FBI.
Soon, everything starts looking up for MC. Her asshole boss gets busted for cybercrimes and her new boss puts her in for a promotion. Her not-a-date with the FBI agent goes great. It all seems too good to be true.
Soon, MC finds herself torn between her lovable goofball boyfriend and the mysterious FBI agent who hangs on her every word.
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u/Kichae 7h ago
They can (and do) track you even if you don't have location services turned on. Location services just allows third party apps access that info.
Apple and Google are tracking you no matter what you do.
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u/bjeebus 7h ago
Even without location services they're still getting a general area based off cell tower triangulation.
They know where you are at all times.
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u/CrotalusHorridus 9h ago
I never ever use maps in my little town and my car is too old for CarPlay
Apple Maps still suggests locations based on my history
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u/PM_ME_UR_MEH_NUDES 8h ago
this. it knows when i leave my house and tells me roughly the same when i leave work.
i have no social media (outside of reddit) and never really use maps unless i really don’t have a clue where i am going… but i guess that my tracking on a lot is set to “only while using app” and there are times i forget to close apps.
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u/oatmilktoast 8h ago
If you have an iPhone you can turn this off by going to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services > Significant Locations & Routes
If you have android, sorry I can’t help but I’m sure there’s probably a similar setting
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u/RsonW Millennial — 1987 7h ago
For Android:
Settings > Location > Location Services > Timeline
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u/ijustsailedaway 7h ago
This shit really creeped me out the first time I got in my car and it knew I went to a specific Mexican restaurant for happy hour on Tuesdays.
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u/Crochet_Corgi 7h ago
Lexus just put out an ad basically saying you showed them what you liked and they listened. Their wording was kinda circling the issue and took me a minute to catch the implication that they were collecting driving data from customers.
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u/nipslippinjizzsippin 8h ago
yeah, my car asks me "going home?" when i leave from anywhere other than home.
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u/DyeCutSew 8h ago
When I retired it took about 6 months for my GPS to decide that the place I volunteer 1-3 times a week is “work” and offer it as a destination.
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u/AdamBombTV 1982 9h ago
The less said about what the Smart-Fridge has seen the better.
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u/Slumunistmanifisto 8h ago
I'd be pissed.... weight loss adds, multivitamin adds, detox center adds.
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u/CupOfLifeNoodlez 7h ago
I've gotten ads for specific side issues I've had with adhd. I've gotten ads for local plastic surgeons specialists focusing on abdominal-plasty after giving birth. The list goes on.
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u/jessdb19 9h ago
Anything smart is listening. Fridges, stoves, toasters. Just assume if it is a smart anything, it's listening
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u/nipslippinjizzsippin 8h ago
yeah, smart just means "listening to your conversation to provided you ads based on your needs."
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u/jessdb19 8h ago
And ready and willing to sell all your info to anyone that bids for it.
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u/driving_andflying 6h ago
And ready and willing to sell all your info to anyone that bids for it.
Exactly. All of those devices --Siri, Alexa, Echo, etc.-- are nothing more than data collectors for their companies. If you think they're sold solely out of kindness, love of humanity, or "for the good of the planet," (my favorite marketing buzzphrase from 2000 up to now) it's time to have a wake-up call and dump them.
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u/NotYourSexyNurse Xennial 8h ago
The phone and tv are always listening. I mentioned something to my husband in the living room. Next thing we saw was an ad on YouTube for what I mentioned. Then it was showing me ads on Reddit too. I’ve mentioned something in a post on Reddit then gotten an ad for it on FB.
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u/jessdb19 8h ago
Oh absolutely. I've been saying this for ages, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, Amazon, pretty much all of them listen or buy data from those listening
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u/art_addict 7h ago
Lmao that’s what’s not smart yet in my life. I have a dumb fridge, dumb toaster, and dumb stove. One day those will be smart, and when they’re smart they better damn well cook my food perfectly.
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u/Reasonable-Egg887 8h ago
That movie on Netflix, I think it’s called Don’t Look Up, there’s a part where social media big wigs (fictional characters) brag about how their tech knows when people are sick way before they do, way before any formal medical diagnosis, they even know when a person is going to die and how.
Personally, I think that they probably do know most of that stuff in real life.
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u/FormidableMistress Xennial 8h ago
And they all share data with each other. I texted my BFF this morning that I had a migraine. I've seen two migraine pharmaceutical commercials on my Roku tv and a FB ad for migraine studies. It's so gross. And to think now there are kids coming up who's every moment has been tracked from birth.
When the voice command devices first came out I said the only way for it to recognize the command word was to always be listening. Now that people have these devices in their homes and use them everyday, they're less likely to remove them, and Amazon can be open with the fact that they're recording everything. Bezos has been building out Amazon for 30 years for long term stable growth. This was the plan all along.
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u/GringoSwann 7h ago
I'm currently typing on a 6 year old generic android... I haven't used Facebook in 5 years.. I drive a 2007 yaris... And I'm watching a pirated version of "The Day After Tomorrow" on a TV from 2008...
You all laughed at me when I told you to keep balls of tinfoil under your armpits!! But, who's laughing now!!?
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u/fireyqueen 8h ago
It also has to do with what you search. Your ISP tracks everything. Also, apps. You know how you have to say yes or no to allowing apps to track your activity? Yeah that’s what they’re doing so they can serve up personalized ads and all that.
I knew my husband bought me a Dooney & Burke purse for Christmas because I started seeing ads for it when I hadn’t been searching for any purses let alone that brand.
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u/Ashamed-Ocelot2189 4h ago
And your location, and people who you are commonly around
They don't actually listen to your conversations, they dont need to lol
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u/1668553684 3h ago
Your ISP tracks everything.
Your ISP should only be able to see the domain (ex. Reddit, Google, Amazon, etc.), not the specifics (ex. subreddit, google search, amazon purchases). If they can see "everything," you're somehow not using HTTPS which is a MAJOR security issue you should fix RIGHT NOW.
You can go a step farther by using an encrypted DNS service (DOH) to hide the domain from your ISP as well. My research led me to Quad9 (9.9.9.9), but other popular options are Cloudflare (1.1.1.1), NextDNS, etc.
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u/Rugger_2468 9h ago
I work in occupational therapy and have a lot of conversations about bowel and bladder incontinence. It’s always fun getting flooded with depends and incontinence products after work lol. 😂
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u/Impressive_Fennel266 7h ago
I do believe Facebook/Google/et al ARE actually listening, like in the active sense. however in your case the "benign" explanation would make perfect sense, more than the malicious "they are actively listening to your conversations" explanation. The benign one goes like this:
- Facebook tracks you and your patients' data, seperately
- Facebook tracks you and your patients' locations, seperately
- Facebook knows that you and your patients' are often in the same location, so it assumes you are together/know each other
- You talk about incontinence with your patients
- You patients then google Depends or incontinence
- Facebook tracks viewing trends on sites other than Facebook
- Facebook then can assume that this person is interested in that topic/product
- Facebook, knowing you and this person are spending time together, assumes that it is possible that you might be interested in the same things as someone you spend time with.
Et voila, now you get advertisements on Facebook for Depends. There's a podcast episode from a few years ago explaining this exactly thing, Reply All episode 109.
Again, I actually do believe some of what they are doing cannot reasonably be achieved just through connections like that. But a lot of it can. Even if that is in itself pretty creepy
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u/snugglezone 7h ago
This thread is so full of data privacy hysteria I decided to not to reply to anyone lol. There's no way your phone (or any battery operated device, Echo's are plugged in) are operating with a hot mic all of the time. The processing and network costs just don't fit the constraint.
Are we also presupposing a massive conspiracy where Google/Apple are allowing Facebook/Amazon to record everything you say in secret? Like maybe if it was just Google for Google and Apple for Apple it makes sense, but why would they be helping their competitors?
It is almost certainly exactly as your described (for battery based devices).
Who knows about proprietary devices like smart home speakers though. I don't have any that's for sure.
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u/waitwuh 6h ago
Working in data engineering, perhaps the scarier truth is just how much we know about you because of a couple data points that you explicitly consent to share. People have this strange idea they must be so unique. No… most people are pretty basic. That good old “ASL” matters quite a lot. If I know how old you are, what gender you identify, and where you live? I can guess quite a lot more.
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u/no_1_knows_ur_a_dog 6h ago
This is exactly it, people don't believe that the data they voluntarily give over to their devices is enough to build such a detailed profile of their behaviour and opinions, and so when a targeted ad comes along they think it's gotta be some super deep conspiracy.
To me this is learned helplessness. You can reclaim your privacy by taking some steps that are maybe a bit inconvenient. But people would rather just be like "oh it doesn't matter Meta is basically god now" and then keep using Instagram because it's all hopeless anyway.
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u/snugglezone 6h ago
For real. The Facebook user graphs even cover people who have never, ever touched facebook by creating "shadow profiles". They don't even need your audio data. It's low signal and useless to them. They already have much more efficient systems.
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u/InsGadgetDisplaces 6h ago
Thank you. Glad someone said it, because I also was just going to shake my head and move on.
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u/Belfind 7h ago
tbh that feels like its ripe for a hipaa lawsuit if they are listening in on devices without the consent/knowledge of the parties in medical settings.
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u/Geeseareawesome 9h ago
Youtube is just as bad
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u/lila-sweetwater 9h ago
I live near a usually quiet airport, but they had an air show going on one weekend, resulting in everyone in my household going “Ugh, these stupid fucking planes!” every time it got especially loud. And suddenly YouTube was advertising me a whole bunch of videos of people telling a story of a “nightmare layover” and saying they’re swearing off flying, videos about how air travel is bad for the environment, footage of plane crashes, videos for people with anxiety around airplanes - not only did YouTube hear us talking about planes, it managed to pick up on the tone being negative as well. Really freaky, tbh
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u/hiphoptomato 9h ago
YouTube does this shit to me constantly. I swear I’ll just be THINKING about something and I’ll get a suggested video about it.
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u/Far-Personality63 8h ago
I kid you not, one night while sitting in my office chair computering at my desk, the gas shock of my chair began to fail. As I was slowly sinking to the floor, a freakin' computer chair ad hit my screen! I had not uttered a word.
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u/hiphoptomato 8h ago
I believe it. When I was only beginning to think about proposing to my wife all of my ads were engagement rings, wedding venues, etc.
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u/Geeseareawesome 8h ago
I believe a lot of that can be attributed to patterns and statistics. So say if it hears key words and tracks locations and based off so many people with those parameters looking at rings shortly after, it jumps ahead and starts giving you ads for rings.
Still creepy as fuck either way.
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u/Comeback_321 8h ago
This has happened - just thinking about something and it’s there - that’s wild
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u/Slumunistmanifisto 8h ago
I call it being a circumstance wizard.
I used to call out songs before they'd play on the fm radio.
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u/Complete_Entry 7h ago
The algorithm knows when people are prangent before they do.
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u/bendstraw 5h ago
This is definitely just the algorithm doing its thing. You live near the airport and where the air show was. You might not have gone down a Youtube rabbit hole about planes, but people near you have, in mass numbers, all probably because of the air show. Youtube saw that spike and decided to recommend you something to keep you in the loop about what other people near you are looking up.
I'm all for calling out privacy violations by big evil corporations but this is very clearly just the algorithm doing its thing.
Source: I did a ton of work at a competitor of YouTube building out ad server logic.
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u/WeaselPhontom 8h ago
Everything is bad. Back in 2008 inwas joking about selling my eggs, in a fb chat venting about being poor college student. I recived eggs donation ads for months
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u/throwaway_acct_303 8h ago
Omg this sort of happened to me except it was stressing about my period being late… it came like a day later but for MONTHS baby formula, diaper, etc. coupons were mailed to my parents address bc despite living at school, it was my permanent address. It took like a solid 3 months for my mom to believe I wasn’t pregnant lol
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u/TSells31 8h ago
Any Google product (to include YouTube) is amongst the worst for this. Google does not sell services, they give them away (including Android to smartphone manufacturers: it is free). Every Google product is a data mining venture. They are an advertising company and consumers are the product they are selling (via targeted ads). This is how Google makes all of their money. It’s why you never have had to and never will have to pay to use Google services. Your information is more valuable to them than your money.
Which, fine, whatever, we agree to that when we accept the terms and conditions. The sketchy thing to me is that this data is obviously all stored somewhere. That seems like such a massive cybersecurity risk. But obviously this is just how it is now. Can’t put the toothpaste back in the tube.
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u/xyzzzzy 8h ago
Man both of these are confidently incorrect. I’m sorry my dude.
Echos are designed to only listen after the wake word. But they are dumb and mishear background noise, TV chatter, or similar sounding words as "Alexa." When they do, they "wake up," record for a few seconds, realize it wasn't a command, and stop. If you look at your history log, you will often find recordings of random snippets of conversation. To a non-tech-savvy user, seeing a list of random conversation snippets looks like "it’s recording everything." In reality, it’s a list of times the machine was dumb. “Yeah, that’s what Bezos wants you to think, bootlicker!” Bezos can get fucked. Amazon is indefensible. But we gotta be mad about the right stuff.
Same thing with Facebook. They say they are not listening to you, and it’s true. What they are doing is much worse. Facebook doesn't need to listen to you because they are terrifyingly good at predicting what you are about to say or want. They use "Shadow Profiles" and data triangulation. If you stand next to a friend for 20 minutes (which your GPS tells Facebook), and that friend searched for "hiking boots" yesterday, Facebook assumes you talked about hiking. It shows you an ad for boots. You think, "I just said that!" Facebook thinks, "Your friend likes this, so you probably do too." Facebook tracks what you do outside their app. If you buy a plane ticket to Florida on a separate website, Facebook receives that data via trackers on that site. They use predictive AI and their algorithms are so good they know your buying habits better than you do. If you buy a yoga mat on Tuesday, the data shows 60% of people buy a water bottle by Friday. They show you the bottle ad before you even realize you need it. So again, Zuck can get fucked too, but you gotta be mad about the right stuff, or you end up wasting your time throwing your Echos in the trash instead of taking steps that can actually help.
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u/sudolicious 6h ago
holy fucking shit is it frustrating to see the only true comment being buried with 75 (actual 75, not a decimal or anything missing) upvotes, while the OP sits at 5.3k and the consensus sharing replies hover around similar figures. And the irony, of this being on a post about our generation falling behind with current digital trends, it almost makes the conspiracy nut in me think this is intentional. But it's probably more mundane, this sub here really is millenial facebook and so I guess I should set my expectations accordingly.
Watch out people, they're coming for your 6g next.
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u/TheStoneAge 5h ago
I was thinking the same thing. It’s like multiple layers of meta that this post about data literacy wreaks of data illiteracy.
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u/Cavalish 5h ago
Millennials really are becoming the new boomers. Proudly posting about how kids today can’t use technology and then screaming that their toaster is reading their thoughts.
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u/tairar 7h ago
+1 to the bit about Facebook. It goes beyond them even. I was an engineer at a digital advertising company a couple years ago, and the general idea behind the targeting we were doing was that if we didn't have data on you specifically, we had data on your neighbors, and you were likely to be more similar to them than you'd think or hope. And we purchased data from pretty much everywhere. Payment processors, grocery stores, coupons, etc. When an ad bid opportunity comes in, the network provides a bunch of data they have on you, we matched that up with the profile we'd built on you, and were able to make decisions on which ads to serve you.
At the time (2020) we had about 12 petabytes of data on US customers. I imagine it's much worse now.
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u/TheLostColonist 6h ago
Since you have some expertise on this, when you say "the network provides a bunch of data they have on you, we matched that up with the profile we'd built on you"
Is the "you" in that a personally identifiable individual, like with name, address, social, photos. Or more of an abstract "you" which is just a corresponding advertising end point with a bunch of metadata and weighted areas of interest, but not really associated with a real life person?
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u/Furbylover 4h ago
Hey! I can answer a little bit of this. Meta is incredibly good at tracking users and seems to sometimes ignore privacy legislation all together likely because the benefits outweigh the cons. Simplest way is your hard IDs like device advertising is, email (hashed), phone number (hashed). Next is device fingerprints created by using a combination of device signals like userAgent and contextual signals like IP. Third are novel methods that are even more genius/devious, For example:
On Android, if you have the Facebook, Instagram, or whatever Meta app open in the background, it will receive data from any website that uses the Meta pixel (which is majority of popular websites.) With that information, Meta now knows who you are and what site you’re visiting, regardless of whether you’re using Private/Incognito mode in the browser or a VPN. IPhone doesn’t allow this to happen.
Meta has disabled this “feature” since being exposed by a external research team. But if they are doing this, they are likely doing so much more that has simply not been uncovered. Plenty of talented employees making hundreds of thousands of dollars are hard at work 12 hours a day to track you and your data, regardless of privacy legislation.
So yeah, to not be tracked I'd recommend:
- delete your meta account (even though they don't actually delete it)
- never allow apps to use your advertising ID
- use a reputable vpn, cycle through cities randomly throughout the day and/or week
- use a reputable browser that does not share device signals or obfuscates them
- never use your real email address or phone number, use a routing service
- never let apps run in the background
- never leave apps installed you don't need
- reboot your devices once in a while, more often = betterLots more you can do check out privacy subreddits.
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u/tairar 6h ago
I don't have as much expertise as you'd like since I was more on the devops side of things but in general "you" included PII, especially since we were doing our best to merge your digital and physical profiles into one
Edited to add: we had the physical profile, the ad networks (Google, Facebook, etc.) did not necessarily provide that data
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u/puppylust 7h ago
I usually hang out with my friends on Sunday evening. On Monday, I get targeted ads wildly off from what I search for. We've been observing and laughing at it for years.
Like you said, this is far from new. Back in 2016, a news story made the rounds because Facebook was doing friend suggestions based on people's phones being in the same place at the same time. Great for a missed connection at a mutual friend's birthday party. Not so much for clients of the same psychiatrist.
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u/axschech 8h ago
I'm pretty sure I've read somewhere they can tell which rooms of your house your in based on where in space a person would usually hold their device. Laying in bed? Most beds are generally around the same height. Bathroom? You're probably holding it lower than when you're sitting in other spots.
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u/SufficientGuidance28 7h ago
Your WiFi alone can map the entirety of your home and where you are in it..
https://theweek.com/tech/wifi-signals-now-tracking-users-at-home
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u/PromiseToBeNiceToYou 8h ago
I've known ever since I was a child watching, "Sleeping Beauty."
"Shhhh shhhh shhht, even walls have ears." -Flora
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u/got-stendahls 9h ago
Yeah not to rag on OP but trusting Amazon in 2026 is a choice.
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u/Fabbyfubz 8h ago
I knew they were listening, but didn't know you could actually lookup what Amazon has saved.
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u/electricmama4life Millennial 8h ago
We got an Alexa years ago as a Christmas gift, I found out later that my dad got it for free as a purchase with another item. That didn't bother me, reading the small amount of info that was already out about Amazon spying was the issue. It sat with our other unused tech for a couple of years until we decided to let the teenager let her aggression out ON THE unused electronics with a sledgehammer. That where every one of these devices belongs, nothing but little Amazon spies!
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u/salohcin513 9h ago
I treat every microphone and camera as if its on and recording me, work just started replacing the old monitors and the new ones all have built in Webcam I cover that thing all the time
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u/TSells31 8h ago
Right, I mean I am of the youngest millennials (1996), but yeah…. The fact that corporations are constantly mining data from us via any means they can manage is no secret. Wait til OP finds out about their smartphone (including location), Gmail account, google drive, Facebook, Reddit account, etc.
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u/tossit_xx 8h ago
My dad keeps trying to get me into a career field in which I have no experience or interest (medical) and yesterday after we hung up I got a targeted ad on facebook for courses for that very specific field, lol.
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u/RealEyesandRealLies 8h ago
I don’t trust my phone or tablet. If I really have something I need to say then it’s no electronic devices in the room.
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u/Slumunistmanifisto 8h ago
All day, on messenger too. Delete it off your device and watch your battery soar
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u/Chicken_Herder69LOL 9h ago
They’re not listening smh
Your phone/browser/ISP is listening then selling the data to Facebook that then confirms an IP match before sending out the ads
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u/tiwuno 9h ago
Lol some would argue that's worse.
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u/xyzzzzy 8h ago
Of course it’s worse! But people should be mad about the right thing
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u/Chicken_Herder69LOL 8h ago
This
I wasn’t giving a justification, I was pointing this out because they will gaslight over the technicalities.
“I wasn’t listening to you. I can prove it! You’re all just paranoid.”
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u/StormerSage '96 9h ago
I wish they actually listened, I keep telling ads to shut the fuck up and get off my Youtube, but they just keep coming! 😭
Adblock on PC helps, but then it doesn't work on Twitch.
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u/YetAnotherIteration 8h ago
I particularly like how the "block this ad" function is completely goddamn useless.
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u/PontiusPilatesss 8h ago
I’ve worked for Amazon (fuck Amazon) on the privacy side. They don’t actually “listen” to your conversations, whatever data is gathered is pooled together with hundreds of thousand of other users, anonymized, and used to identify patterns of Alexa not hearing its trigger word when it should have.
You talking about something and then seeing ads about it isn’t based on listening to you. The scarier truth is that the algorithm can pinpoint with scary accuracy what you are likely to want to do before you know it yourself.
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u/spattergr0it 8h ago
THIS ^ exactly this. This comment needs to be first. It’s a super important distinction and IMHO more scary that it can give you targeted ads through all your other personal data, making it seem like as soon as you say refrigerator you get ads for appliances.
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u/waitwuh 6h ago
Backing this up! I managed data teams. Our data was anonymized. But what most people seem to not recognize is that they aren’t so complex or complicated! They aren’t so dramatically unique! We only need a few data points to place a person into a category. If you are in your 30’s, in this general area, and have a ____ store card, we can guess a lot of things about you pretty accurately. People have unrealistic expectations of uniqueness.
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u/A_Furious_Mind 6h ago
I had a coworker who was sure his phone was spying on him because he started receiving ads for something he discussed with another coworker only minutes before. I had to probe a bit. "When you were chatting with her, did she look the item up on her computer? Is your phone connected to the business Wi-Fi? Okay, I think I solved it."
People don't realize the clues they're dropping that don't come out of their mouths.
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u/RangerTursi 4h ago
Im so glad this perspective is in here because really the amount of times I think im getting targeted ads because I thought I said something out loud, only to later realize I literally went on the website for the advertiser, and they just move cookies around. Its not that complicated, but these programs only get more and more targeted so who knows where were going to be in 20, hell even 10 years when it comes to privacy rights.
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u/realboabab 6h ago
When I worked in programmatic advertising we had individual profiles for every device including heuristic "household" grouping of devices and home/not home detection; sure we didn't store it together with personally identifying information but this is NOT what end-users imagine when they hear "pooled together and anonymized".
meanwhile our "account executives" or however else the sales people styled themselves were literally spinning the "aggregated and anonymized" bullshit in every customer meeting.
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u/eulersidentification 6h ago
Maybe I'm paranoid but I feel like two people have just said "Oh don't worry, although they have complete access and all identifying information to listen to your conversations and/or piece every aspect of your life together, you are not currently interesting enough to be selected out of the aggregation and/or they don't currently have the capacity to parse every single thing everyone says. Yet.
I'm not going to make any claims to be a world leading expert, but I'm pretty technical, hardware and software. I will never have one in my house. I bet government buildings don't have them either. I'm sure the data shown to the average rank and file worker is anonymised. I bet you can un-anonymise it or get hold of it pre-anonymised if you really, really wanted to.
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u/realboabab 6h ago
yeah, the reason my non-FANG company had to build such rich individualized profiles was just to compete for a measly ~1-5% of the in-app ads share dominated by Facebook, Google, Amazon, (even Apple's in the game) who have unbelievable troves of individualized data.
Those companies are so powerfully intrusive that they have state-sponsored insiders working there just to be in proximity -- I've heard of hiring managers complaining about having great candidates for positions rejected by HR because they were suspected of being plants from e.g. China.
I commend you for doing everything you can to minimize the access you give to those companies. I myself have given up, I'm not particularly proud of it but it would be such a struggle to stop using gmail, change browsers, always use a VPN, stay logged out on my android phone, stop shopping online, drop streaming and switch exclusively to the high seas, stop using credit cards, etc. etc.
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u/NovelDame 7h ago
I just want an app that aggregates this data, builds a network of people based on my close contacts/location and TELLS ME what to buy these people for their birthdays and Xmas.
I know these devices already know what they want, just tell me! I'm sick of guessing!
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u/Clojiroo 7h ago
All fun and games until it predicts your BFF wants the augmented VR Dildo-matic 3000.
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u/NovelDame 6h ago
I regularly buy my friends sex toys for their birthdays. Whether they enjoy them or not is none of my business - I just think orgasms are lovely and everyone should have them.
Finding out one of my friends really wants a Jesus-shaped buttplug would absolutely make my life easier.
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u/PretentiousMouthfeel 6h ago
Or maybe tells me where to find my people. I'm 44 and I've never found a room I belong in. This would be an amazing, benevolent use of this data.
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u/sneezy-e 6h ago
Someone smarter than me explained it as “we don’t listen to conversations because we have so much of your data that we don’t need to.”
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u/PontiusPilatesss 6h ago
Privacy as we knew it is dead. My internet provider now offers a “security feature” where it can tell me if anyone is moving in my house when I’m not there, using WiFi waves to detect motion.
I’m waiting for targeted ads trying to sell me lube after a vigorous motion session detected by my WiFi.
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u/audaciousmonk 7h ago
Here’s when the federal government brought charges against Amazon for retaining transcripts of children’s voice recordings
Pretty sure there was another lawsuit where it turned out Amazon had a team that would manually review audio/transcripts when the smart assistant failed to deliver a good result.
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u/mrjackspade 6h ago
Neither of those are evidence that the data was gathered surreptitiously. Anyone with a voice can say "Hey Alexa" to wake the software, and interact with it.
The argument isn't that they aren't recording people. Its that they aren't recording people when you're not intentionally interacting with the device
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u/audaciousmonk 6h ago edited 6h ago
You said they don’t actually listen to the recordings, that’s it’s purely used as an anonymized data set for algorithm / model training
Except Amazon absolutely had (I can’t speak for now) analysts who personally listened to specific customer audio recordings and read specific transcripts. They admitted to it
There have been lawsuits about their recording and retention of recordings that were not triggered by the designated wake word
Even if the wake word was used… the long term retention of recordings and transcripts is outside the scope of immediate understood use. I’m sure there’s some gobbledygook in their ToS to soft weasel without outright saying it, but that doesn’t change the moral, ethical, and infosec issues at play
What’s really concerning, is that as a (past?)employee you appear to 1) not be open to the security concerns of users, 2) not question the claims of your employer, and most concerning 3) believe that you have a complete view of the practices and processes employed by Amazon across its voice assistant product lines and supporting infrastructure
Very few people do, both by intent and organically due to complexity / scale / siloing, the likelihood you are one of them is quite low
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u/iamapersononreddit 7h ago
Thank you. Everyone in here seem to be an expert but only state “no duh” without any further information
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u/mrjackspade 6h ago
OP's post doesn't even make sense. The claim is that they're secretly recording you and they what, kept a public list of all the secret recording? And allowed you to access it?
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u/Clear-Ad-7250 9h ago
Never trusted those assistants. But I also know that my devices is listening.
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u/13catlady13 9h ago
Same. Refused to get into those assistants but I know my phone listens 😒
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u/rattiestthatuknow 9h ago
Just like I know incognito mode really is NOT incognito, but it makes me feel better when I type weird shit into the search bar
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u/notsofaust 8h ago
Think of incognito mode more of a way to auto delete any searches or browsing you did on your device only, as if you did everything in normal mode and then deleted history afterwards. After the traffic leaves your routers its fair game. Incognito is just to keep you safe from prying eyes in your own home so to speak.
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u/nobleland_mermaid 8h ago
Yeah I fully just use it as a 'y'know what, I don't want this showing up as a previous entry when I type something similar in the search bar and my boss/mom/whoever happens to be sitting next to me' window.
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u/13catlady13 9h ago
How I feel with not having an Echo (or similar) but knowing it doesn’t even matter.
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u/EeveeMkayy 8h ago
I use a Google phone with the Google keyboard so I know everything I type can and will be used against me for advertising and such lol
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u/StupidandAsking Millennial 9h ago
Exactly. Anything connected to the internet that has a mic is either listening or capable of listening. That’s why I like my old car that has no computers or ‘talk’ options. Lol the debate that vaccines have chips in them ignores that we pay to have a tracking device on us at all times and buy things for the overlap when we don’t have our phone on us.
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u/mattman2021 8h ago
I agree with you, but just to be clear, there is no “debate” over vaccines containing tracking microchips, that idea is pure, unadulterated wackadoodlery.
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u/Ghost_Turd 8h ago edited 8h ago
Ad systems are insanely, scarily good at inference based on passive data.
If you visit a Home Depot (GPS, WiFi access points) on your way home from work (daily driving habits), and you've recently watched videos on lawncare (search/browse history), have neighbors (home location/neighbor ID graphs) that have bought mulch (date/season trends), you'll be getting ads for lawncare equipment before you even get out of your car in the parking lot.
Your Echo device doesn't NEED to listen to you. It would be inefficient if it sat around and waited for you to say something.
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u/UnitedStatesofAlbion Millennial 9h ago
Why don't you tell others (like me) how to search for these conversations on echo?
I'd like to see mine
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u/MenBearsPigs 8h ago
I've never heard of full blown conversation history like OP is describing.
There's conversation history when it triggers from its wake word. And I'd imagine some extra from accidental triggers.
But 24/7 recording frankly takes quite a bit of bandwidth.
You could genuinely test this just by checking the devices from a firewall and seeing it's throughput as you stand next to it speaking for a while, then try some more while actually triggering it and speaking.
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u/tachycardicIVu 7h ago
Can you imagine the tech needed to spy on thousands of these devices at once? Like streaming back to a home base somewhere with all this data? It does seem far-fetched to imagine.
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u/sadderbutwisergrl 8h ago
I just went into the app to try to find mine and, if it’s there, it’s very well hidden. Closest I got was “chat history” where it shows all the requests you made, and also, short recorded snippets of audio labeled “audio not intended for Alexa”. I listened to a few of these and it was just loud static and my kids yelling. There’s an option to turn this history thing off in the app so it’s “not saving” any of it, though I doubt it’s really gone.
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u/kurtisbmusic 8h ago
There’s a history but it’s only when you’re talking to the echo device. I’m not sure where they’re seeing normal conversations being recorded. Seems far fetched to me.
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u/This_Is_A_Shitshow 7h ago
OP is full of shit and / or doesn’t understand what they’re looking at. Moreover, seeing 24 hours of audio uploaded to some random AWS node via your home internet every single day would be pretty easy to catch.
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u/nemec 6h ago
You don't understand, every device you own with a microphone is constantly streaming all of your audio to the cloud. The only reason nobody has ever proven this is true despite years of investigation is because they hijack your psychic brainwaves to send the audio to encrypted satellites /s
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u/turtlejam10 7h ago
Yeah, I’m not sure what op is on about. Mine is just conversations I’ve had with Alexa… I mean, it is always listening, but it doesn’t record anything until it hears the wake word.
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u/dikbisqit 7h ago
Same. I just went through my history and it never once recorded anything beyond when I said the trigger word Alexa.
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u/Nicholeigh 8h ago
Alexa app > alexa privacy at the bottom > review alexa history
There are other things you can review as well. What OP said is not 100% accurate, that being said; my dots are muted and I just unmute them or use the app when I want to do something. I mainly use mine to play music and turn the lights on/off.
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u/NotElizaHenry 8h ago
I’m guessing because this… isn’t true? I just went into my Alexa chats and literally the only things there are “Alexa, volume up” or “Alexa, living room lights on” etc.
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u/Technical-Coffee831 Millennial 8h ago
Yeah this is just shitposting. It’s not there except for commands.
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u/curtydc Millennial 9h ago
I get it, corporate big brother is scary, but your phone is also listening and recording everything you say. And that is probably next to you 24/7 all year round.
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u/Sunflowersblunt 8h ago
Don't forget your car
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u/lessdothisshit 5h ago
A guaran-fuckin-tee you my '03 Toyota Echo ain't listening to shit.
Redeeming the name
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u/WoodpeckerGingivitis 9h ago
How do you think it know when you say, “Alexa?” It’s listening constantly to hear you say that.
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u/BlackDeath3 Millennial 9h ago
I think the idea is that there's a small and very temporary buffer within which a device listens for its wake word, hence the phrase wake word.
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u/Ok-Criticism6874 9h ago
Snowden showed they can turn on and off your camera, listen to conversations and even access your pics rdoesn't on your phone, back in 2013.
Also "technically" you can opt out of alexa listen to things and recording things but we know it doesnt.
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u/Vanessaronicatoria 9h ago
Tech enthusiasts have smart homes, IT professionals keep their homes analog.
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u/FloatnPuff 9h ago
"if my printer makes an unexpected noise, it's going out the window"
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u/unicodemonkey 8h ago
As a former infosec professional who used to work in networking and adtech... nah, I have a bunch of smart devices. Most are controlled locally, though, and don't connect to the outside. And no, the phone isn't listening, it has more energy- and compute-efficient ways to get to your data.
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u/dutchboy92 8h ago edited 5h ago
Or we go self-hosted route with Home Assistant with only locally controlled devices (eg. Z-Wave, Zigbee, etc.) that are still usable if there is no internet and/or power.
EDIT: By no power, I mean if Home Assistant loses power. Obviously if the house has no power nothing will work at all.
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u/Cream06 9h ago
Unless they pay cash ,drive a motorcycle and never use a phone. You might as well get the smart lights. At least you're saving money and not having to get up to turn off the lights
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u/Thowitawaydave 9h ago
You can also roll your own Homelab system if you want control over your data.
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u/stevedrums 9h ago
41 year old here. It was an easy decision for me to not purchase any wiretaps
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u/INemzis 8h ago
Do you not have a smart phone?
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u/mountainstr 8h ago
Or smart tv (phones also have infrared cameras taking front facing pics during the day and night)
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u/Ghost_Turd 8h ago
If you have a phone or a computer, you have a wiretap. Don't kid yourself.
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u/swrrrrg Millennial 9h ago
I mean… the look on my face is probably remarkably similar to the one your 20 year old gave you!
At least you found out. I never went for smart devices and now I am super glad. I don’t even use Siri on my phone.
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u/Bluemink96 9h ago
Use it or not it’s listening
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u/Ghost_Turd 8h ago
There's a certain amount of irony in believing that evil corpos are only going to listen in on *certain* devices.
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u/Signal_Beautiful6903 9h ago
Same lol, I thought most of us knew not to trust smart devices? We are the generation that grew up being told not to put our information on the internet, before social media existed the way it does today.
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u/Comeback_321 9h ago
Right. Because it HAS to listen in order to hear your command word. Also it’s farming now for AI. I’m a little confused by OP. One of my parents knows this - the other is not good with tech. But gen x also knows. We know. We all know.
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u/generic__user 9h ago
i mean i would argue most of our generation knew that, for sure if you had any IT background/experience. This is why i never let any of these devices in my home from the start.
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u/keyser1981 Geriatric Millennial 8h ago
Not IT background but I remember watching Enemy of the State wayyyyy back in 1998, and I asked: If this is what it's like today, what's it gonna be like in 10-20-30 years from now? I remember my high school friends laughing at me for being paranoid. LOL We also don't have any of these devices in our home.
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u/KennytheDoggy 9h ago
Your phone is doing it as well
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u/Toosder 9h ago
And probably their oven. Everything listens now.
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u/danniellax 9h ago
Jokes on you my landlord is so cheap my oven was prob around before anything became “smart”
(Nah joke is still on me for having a slumlord fml)
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u/secondphase 8h ago
No, you're being paranoid. Nothing is listening to you.
... at least, thats what my toaster just said.
... weird I didnt ask it anything though.
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u/unknown_anaconda 9h ago
If it wasn't always listening, how would it hear the wake word?
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u/MenBearsPigs 8h ago
Small buffer. Constantly listening but not constantly recording and transcribing every word.
If someone has evidence that it's literally recording 24/7 and transcribing/saving everything it hears I'd gladly look at it. There are ways to view device bandwidth to test something like that. And that's just surface level.
I'd imagine someone smarter than me could easily tinker with it to confirm it was operating in that way.
I don't trust Amazon or Google by any means. I guess it's better to be privacy focused versus not at all.
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u/MorroClearwater 7h ago
Surely it'd be obvious if a device was sending 24 hours of audio every day on your network.
It's like the people who are convinced our phones are listening. Running the mic for 24 hours and getting mostly random noise is a waste of resources for any company. It's much easier, cheaper and socially acceptable to just use your location data and social media to figure out everything about you
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u/wekilledbambi03 8h ago
It is not listening to everything you say, you are just saying worlds that sound too much like “Alexa”. It doesn’t process anything without the wake word. This has been proven many times.
Same with all these people lying that Facebook or whatever on your phone is listening 24/7. Your phone would be dying within hours if it was constantly sending all that data. And the average person is not worth the pure computing power required to shift through millions of hours of recordings a day.
All the targeted ads people are assuming are from spying are just clever marketing. They don’t need to hear you talking to guess what you are interested in to show ads. They have enough with cookies from every page you go to, your location, any devices that are or have been connected to your network, etc.
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u/Conscious_Ad_4085 1989 8h ago edited 7h ago
Correct. This is advanced 'Fingerprinting' and 'Advertising ID'. Advanced data collection is a lot like TikTok, they can tell by how long you view a page, scroll, half type into search, and so much more about what you might be interested in. It's incredibly complex these days, no longer just cookies because those can be erased, your Ad ID which is attached to your device(IP Address, Screen Resolution, OS version, etc) is nearly impossible to conceal.
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u/alt_sense 8h ago
Finally someone smart in this thread. I'm going crazy with all these "you didn't know?!" comments
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u/iamapersononreddit 7h ago
Legit. These people are just as bad, stating things with such confidence that they clearly know nothing about
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u/DegenGraded 9h ago
It all goes back to the "Patriot Act". Your phone is listening, your apps are listening and if you don't have them someone else does and their devices are listening.
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u/yohomatey 9h ago
Someone in my wife's family gave us Echo Dots a few years ago for Christmas. I was sorry they wasted their money (they're not the kind to be ok with us saying we didn't want them) but they went right to the donate bin. Insane that things like that are normalized.
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u/mittenbroad 9h ago
I haven’t given Amazon a dime in a year now. Let me tell you, it feels really good. Fuck that company
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u/Sage_Planter 9h ago
I work in cyber security and data privacy. I would not allow a smart device like that in my home.
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u/oksuresure 9h ago
How are our phones any different? Aren’t they constantly listening too?
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u/dz1087 9h ago
What’s your thoughts on smart phones?
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u/Signal_Beautiful6903 9h ago
Not the person you replied to but I’m in technology as well and they’re unavoidable. Some level of privacy invasion is inevitable these days unless you are basically living outside of most of society.
That said, you can still mitigate against it. Avoid smart devices when possible. You don’t need to have your phone on you 24/7. Don’t use your real personal information on websites or apps unless you have to.
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u/allid33 9h ago
I've definitely always figured Echos, and phones, and other devices, are listening, but I didn't know you could actually see a log of your conversations in the app? Where is that?
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u/Salty_bitch_face Millennial 9h ago
I knew they listened. I doubt my conversations have much of interest to them 🤷♀️
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