Is my phone listening to me — and other questions you asked about our spying tech

Updated

After announcing a plan to spy on my devices to see what they're really saying about me behind my back, I've spent much of the week — while collecting the data — reading hundreds of your emails and tweets.

There were lots of offers to help (thank you) and also lots of questions you wanted answered. So today I'm going to answer a couple of those questions.

The most common question I received was some variation on: 'is my phone listening to my conversations and sending me ads for things I talk about?' In fact, it was often more of an assertion than a question — lots of you are pretty convinced Facebook in particular is eavesdropping on you.

So, are our phones listening to us?

Well, the short answer is: Facebook has flatly denied it, and although it's difficult to know for certain, leading technologists think the company is telling the truth.

Want to help?

Is there something you'd like to know about the data being shared by your devices? Let me know

I already have a lot of data. You can help start sifting through it below.

of data. You can help start sifting through it below. Let's chat on Twitter where I will be tweeting about what I find using the #DataLife hashtag

You can email me on datalife@abc.net.au

If you're not sure what I'm on about, here's a typical scenario courtesy of a listener of triple j's Hack program: "I was talking to a friend about her wedding at the park (I never discuss or search anything wedding-related) and a day later my Instagram started showing engagement ring ads."

Hack reporter Jo Lauder actually looked into this back in June and through the magic of cuckoo clocks (and some help from the experts) came to the conclusion that actually there are more plausible (but maybe more sinister) explanations for this phenomenon.

Lots of people won't be convinced, but the bottom line is there are technically easier ways to achieve this kind of slightly-too-creepy ad targeting.

The easier way is to leverage all the other data these companies already have about you and your social circle. Like:

Where you are and where you've been

Who you interact with on social media (and who they interact with)

A good proportion of your web browsing history

Demographic details like your age and gender (even if they don't explicitly know these things, they will estimate them by looking at other data like your interests and social circles)

With all this data available, it's not too hard to join the dots that you're around marrying age, have just met with your friend who has been looking at lots of wedding dresses online and you've just moved in with your partner of eight months.

In other words, Facebook isn't eavesdropping on you — because it doesn't need to.

If that all sounds too far-fetched, keep in mind that for this kind of strategy to pay off when used on a broad scale, the probability of you buying an engagement ring only needs to be slightly higher than for someone else who might otherwise be shown the ad.

No but really, I'm sure they're listening …

Like every good conspiracy theory, there is a kernel of truth which makes it seem plausible. In December 2017, the New York Times reported on a company called Alphonso which uses software embedded in some mobile phone apps — often cheap or free games — to detect when certain ads play on TV and the programs in which they're airing.

One way they use this data is to 're-target' people by showing them ads on digital platforms that they've already seen on TV.

The thing is though, with the rise of devices like smart TVs, even this will be unnecessary. The TV itself is likely to be capable of reporting back on what the viewer is watching, so why go to all the trouble of implementing the technically complex task of listening for and interpreting the audio?

Will a VPN protect me?

Coming in a close second to questions of audio eavesdropping was the question of whether using a VPN is a good idea.

For the uninitiated, a VPN — or a virtual private network — is a tool used to secure communications between two computers on the internet. But more and more they're being marketed as a method for protecting your personal privacy while online.

Ads for VPN services tend to use emotional appeals to the safety and security of you and your loved ones, but is that something they can actually provide?

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While using a VPN can provide some protection in some specific circumstances, they are by no means a comprehensive privacy protection tool, and the quality of the services available varies dramatically. In the worst-case scenario, you may actually be making things worse since an unscrupulous VPN provider could be doing the opposite of what they claim and harvesting a lot of data about you.

A VPN won't, for example, stop Facebook from tracking your web browsing history or Google from tracking your search history. They may mask, but won't necessarily hide your location.

About the only good reason to use a VPN for general internet use is if you don't trust your internet provider — which can log a lot of data about your internet usage — or if you don't want your data captured by Australia's mandatory data retention scheme.

But the problem is fundamentally one of trust. If you're using a VPN because you don't trust your internet provider, you need to be sure you can trust your VPN provider, who would have access to all the same data about your online activity. It's likely impossible to verify claims about what data they do or don't log, or what they do with your data.

And a VPN won't protect against nearly any of the tracking systems that enable all that creepy ad targeting.

Do you have the data yet?

Not quite. My data collection is still running. I hit a couple of early technical hitches but have ironed them out and now have almost a full seven days' worth of data. I'll be sifting through it over the coming week and will share what I've found soon.

Topics: internet-technology, internet-culture, information-and-communication, computers-and-technology, social-media, australia

First posted