Following up on our previous post ‘How We Get Tracked by Our Phones and by People We Don’t Imagine‘, it’s even worse: our phones are constantly listening too! This USA Today column ‘You’re not paranoid: Your phone really is listening in‘ covers some interesting details.
It appears there is a strong suspicion that new marketing approaches is to serve adds based on some key words that are listened by the phone.
“In mid-2018, a reporter for Vice experimented to see just how closely smartphones listen to our conversations. To test his phone, the journalist spoke preselected phrases twice a day for five days in a row. Meanwhile, he monitored his Facebook feed to see if any changes occurred. Sure enough, the changes seemed to arrive overnight.”
Of course there is some convenience in being able to instruct your phone or device by voice (although I still find it odd and prefer to type), but it obviously comes with some drawbacks.
So if you want to have a really important discrete conversation, have your phone somewhere else. Even when it’s off, someone may still listen to you!
