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Is Facebook spying on our conversations through our phones?

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I wouldn't say that Google / Facebook aren't doing this (because nothing surprises me anymore tbh). But your friends, relatives, coworkers etc could be searching this stuff.

Google and Facebook use a lot of metrics and combine them in ways you wouldn't believe. Not just on you directly, they can guess based on others in your circles. Geolocation, shared phone books etc.

Person A is in person B's contacts list
Person B is in person A's contacts list
Neither are friends on Facebook, but geolocation/IP shows same places at reasonably same times of the day.
What websites people around have been browsing (that of course, have like buttons or other FB/ google analytics metrics).
Etc etc. It's a lot deeper than you think.

And the worst part is that even if they don't have certain things of info they need from you, with enough existing data they can guess the rest with a reasonably high statistical success rate...
 
People are subject to confirmation bias and forgetfulness. All of the anecdotal "I talked about this thing in real life then I started seeing ads for it!" can be explained by those simple facts.
 
I will say I have never once googled or typed anything related to Wolf trap, a big theatre nearby with lots of live performances. We were hosting an event for the company and we were discussing the event details at work. After the meeting I opened up my phone and my Facebook app was flooded with ads about Wolf trap. I don't know how else to explain it since I had never once had a wolf trap ad appear and then after the meeting, I saw several. My phone was out and just sitting at the middle of the table. I also looked and didn't see any mentions online linking my work to Wolf Trap either.
 
formasymphonic said:
I wouldn't say that Google / Facebook aren't doing this (because nothing surprises me anymore tbh). But your friends, relatives, coworkers etc could be searching this stuff.

Google and Facebook use a lot of metrics and combine them in ways you wouldn't believe. Not just on you directly, they can guess based on others in your circles. Geolocation, shared phone books etc.

Person A is in person B's contacts list
Person B is in person A's contacts list
Neither are friends on Facebook, but geolocation/IP shows same places at reasonably same times of the day.
What websites people around have been browsing (that of course, have like buttons or other FB/ google analytics metrics).
Etc etc. It's a lot deeper than you think.

And the worst part is that even if they don't have certain things of info they need from you, with enough existing data they can guess the rest with a reasonably high statistical success rate...
Click to expand...

Yeah dude, meta-data, welcome to the NSA in 1993...
 
its a part of a seemingly very advanced advertising network/algorithm.

My wife looks at stuff on amazon all the time, which then conspicuously shows up in my facebook feed. The kicker she doesnt have a facebook account, nor any facebook app on her iphone or ipad.

I just assumed there's some database somewhere that has our external comcast IP address logged and shows where we went and then feeds us ads based on that content.

Whats really annoying is when i already bought the thing and i still get ads for it!
 
shattyboombatty said:
A while ago I went on a hike and saw some manzanita trees. I had never seen trees like it, nor did I even know what kind of tree I was taking a picture of.

I just took those pics and thought nothing of it, didn't google for them, have never once searched for "manzanita" anything.

The next day I got an ad in amazon for this print of a manzanita tree (which is how I even knew it was a manzanita):

My being-spied-on radar hit 10/10
Click to expand...
Damn that's creepy lol.

Why do you think Google offers unlimited storage for HD pics in Google Photos?
jrh2 said:
People are subject to confirmation bias and forgetfulness. All of the anecdotal "I talked about this thing in real life then I started seeing ads for it!" can be explained by those simple facts.
Click to expand...
The Manzanita tree one simply isn't.
 
Lord_Byron28 said:
I will say I have never once googled or typed anything related to Wolf trap, a big theatre nearby with lots of live performances. We were hosting an event for the company and we were discussing the event details at work. After the meeting I opened up my phone and my Facebook app was flooded with ads about Wolf trap. I don't know how else to explain it since I had never once had a wolf trap ad appear and then after the meeting, I saw several. My phone was out and just sitting at the middle of the table. I also looked and didn't see any mentions online linking my work to Wolf Trap either.
Click to expand...

We just saw a photo of Zuckerberger with tape over his camera and audio jack. C'mon people...
 
Joke's on them: I use my internet exclusively for porn, and refuse to discuss other topics over the phone. They'll have to get off their moral high horse and put naked people in their ads if they want to use my data to sell me things.
 
No, they DEFINITELY are doing this. At least Google is

Talked with a friend about doing Tough Mudder, low and behold when I jump on GAF I see Tough Mudder ads
 
Aske said:
Joke's on them: I use my internet exclusively for porn, and refuse to discuss other topics over the phone. They'll have to get off their moral high horse and put naked people in their ads if they want to use my data to sell me things.
Click to expand...

Yeah.. ads are a minimal by-product of this whole operation. It's all about power and control, to these people there is no such thing as human rights, only advantages

Most of them were abused as children and cannot understand respecting your privacy, or anyone's, because that's a threat to them. And they work for the NSA and many other companies
 
Stumpokapow said:
This can easily be put to an empirical test.

I have made a list of 10 products that could potentially advertise on Facebook, but that it's highly unlikely that you have previously searched for or interacted with. I think it's fair to say that it's highly unlikely any of these products are things you would see an ad for in the next few weeks. As a result, these are a fairly good rebuttal for the frequency bias.

Think of a number between 1 and 10 and click this link:
http://pastebin.com/raw/v7bszxLD
It's a raw text link, so there are no ads or code running on the page that could possibly link you clicking on this to the ads you see on Facebook. If by some random fluke you picked an item you have ever interacted with, then pick again.

Don't disclose on GAF which number you picked or what items are behind the link (since GAF uses Facebook ads sometimes and those ads presumably read text on pages for context). Don't Google this product or interact with any brands on Facebook. Do not shop for these products or take any measures to get these products.

Tomorrow, call someone you trust. Tell them it's really important they do not look up anything related to the product or post about it or otherwise provide any data that could connect them to this product on Facebook. Repeat the name of the product many times. Talk about the product. Or talk in person with a coworker, whatever, whatever paranoid fantasy you have about how this spying works.

Then go about your business for two weeks, and come back and bump the thread if any ads show up for those products.
Click to expand...

Done. I've set an alarm for two weeks from now. See you there.
 
Innocent until proven guilty, his co-worker could have googled it or talked about it online. If they're friends on FB, they could have shown them the same ads by association.
 
CraigerGamer said:
I don't get anything free from my phone company. Under the situation I quoted and responded to I think it's whole fair to ask for some of the windfall profits companies make off my own information. Sites like Facebook and neogaf, I'm ok with. But for services I pay for and who then make more money off me by selling off my info, I need a piece of that
Click to expand...

Wait, I'm curious, why are phone companies doing?
 
I wouldn't call it spying. They are just parsing through your conversations to find key words that match some database somewhere that ultimately gives you ads about stuff you have talked about.
 
Alienfan said:
Wait, I'm curious, why are phone companies doing?
Click to expand...

All your conversations go through them. When "no one" is looking take a big guess at what happens.

I've worked for Microsoft, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, they would feel left out if they weren't participating in the black industry

Roubjon said:
I wouldn't call it spying. They are just parsing through your conversations to find key words that match some database somewhere that ultimately gives you ads about stuff you have talked about.
Click to expand...

Hahahahahahahahaha
 
Roubjon said:
I wouldn't call it spying. They are just parsing through your conversations to find key words that match some database somewhere that ultimately gives you ads about stuff you have talked about.
Click to expand...
Hi Mark, I loved you on arrested development.
jaxapollo said:
Don't have Facebook, and even if I did I don't use Android, so no.
Click to expand...
You probably use chrome, so you're screwed anyway. Or microsoft Edge, or Apple Safari. Big Brother is here. It's all about how you feel about it. I say don't sweat it.
 
Ahasverus said:
Hi Mark, I loved you on arrested development.

You probably use chrome, so you're screwed anyway. Or microsoft Edge, or Apple Safari. Big Brother is here. It's all about how you feel about it. I say don't sweat it.
Click to expand...
I mean, I know how metadata works. But I know it's not Facebook. That's all that matters. Mark Zuckerburg is an evil person.
 
I've honestly had the same stuff happen to me. Just random shit my wife and I are taking about and recommendations are there waiting
 
If they were streaming data from your mic you could easily catch that with wireshark or something. The bandwidth would be huge.
 
I still wonder why Facebook kept asking if I knew people who lived in Azerbaijan. Can think of multiple countries in my search history that I could see them hazarding a guess, but not that one. It went on for a couple weeks, to the point where I was surprised when they recommended someone who lived in Denver.
 
Hari Seldon said:
If they were streaming data from your mic you could easily catch that with wireshark or something. The bandwidth would be huge.
Click to expand...

They wouldn't have to stream audio, there could just be a voice recognition service running on the device, and upload keywords to some server periodically. The size of a handful of non-generic words would be almost undetectable.

I have no idea what it did in my case: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=208868659&postcount=100

Image recognition? Some backend process that analyzed pics that were somehow auto-uploaded to my picture album? I definitely didn't give my device or accounts any input that I can imagine would trigger that ad. Definitely weird.
 
Hari Seldon said:
If they were streaming data from your mic you could easily catch that with wireshark or something. The bandwidth would be huge.
Click to expand...

I would image that the app converts the recording to text data and encrypts it and sends it back to Facebook. It's probably a few KB.

I read the article and noticed that Facebook uses the wording to the effect of "We do not store or save recordings". They don't say anything about not storing or saving text conversions of recordings. It'd be interesting to use Wireshark and see what data is transferred from your phone.

Yet another reason that I'm happy with my choice to have nothing to do with Facebook. It really annoys me that Samsung put their apps on my phone and do not allow me to remove them without rooting, though.
 
This is what I've done to minimise this sort of stuff:

I don't use Google Chrome
I use uBlock which blocks tracking IPs, ads, Google Analytics javascript, etc.
I have tons of tracking servers blocked in my hosts file
I have all of W10's privacy options off, used DoNotSpy10 to remove the background stuff
I prevent WebRTC local IP address leaking
I block hyperlink auditing attempts
I spoof my HTTP referrer string of third-party requests
I automatically spoof my User-Agent to common ones every 2 minutes
I have my browser set to clear cookies on close (with exceptions for sites like Steam which use 2 f.a and sites that I 'trust' such as Twitch so that my selected video quality and FFZ settings are remembered)
I'm disabling HTML5 Canvas fingerprinting
I've disabled browser access to audio and video devices
I've disabled screenshots by extension API
I opt-out of Google Search's signed-out search activity (manually each time as I don't set cookies on google.co.uk, aka lol nothnx)
I opt-out of YouTube's signed-out watch and search history
Google account activity controls: all off, obviously (web & app activity, location history, voice & audio activity, etc.)
I have my mic and camera blocked on my Android
I disable app permissions that aren't needed (e.g. imgur wants to have access to my contacts)
I have a firewall on my phone to block all internet connection attempts by default (with exceptions of course). F.e. I don't want fun game connecting to the internet
I don't have Facebook

Basically you don't want to be recognisable and you want to give as little data as possible. Having anything listening to me through my mic without my knowledge would be completely unacceptable and I would try to prevent it at all costs.

Any tips would be appreciated.
 
Kod1ak said:
I would image that the app converts the recording to text data and encrypts it and sends it back to Facebook. It's probably a few KB.

I read the article and noticed that Facebook uses the wording to the effect of "We do not store or save recordings". They don't say anything about not storing or saving text conversions of recordings. It'd be interesting to use Wireshark and see what data is transferred from your phone.

Yet another reason that I'm happy with my choice to have nothing to do with Facebook. It really annoys me that Samsung put their apps on my phone and do not allow me to remove them without rooting, though.
Click to expand...

Yeah they could do that, but speech to text 24/7 would be a major process eating up memory and battery. I doubt Apple would let them get away with this. Maybe on android though, at least for google. Can you view running processes on a jailbroken android device?
 
Hari Seldon said:
Yeah they could do that, but speech to text 24/7 would be a major process eating up memory and battery. I doubt Apple would let them get away with this. Maybe on android though, at least for google. Can you view running processes on a jailbroken android device?
Click to expand...

I don't think it would be that intensive. It's hard to say without testing it. When I use the voice to text feature for text messaging, it seems to have little impact.

I don't know enough about phones to know how to look into that. I barely use my phone, outside of texting, calls, and a few apps.

Either way, it seems pretty clear from some of the examples given that they're doing shady things and invading privacy. And it's clear that the people who work for them have no regard for the privacy of their users. Don't even get my started on how they attempt to influence people by messing with their walls or feeds or wherever news stories are posted. They admitted to trying to control people's emotions with that.
 
MegaManTrigger said:
Also, isn't this made redundant now that people use ad-blockers?
Click to expand...

It's amazing how many people don't use ad blockers. I work in IT and occasionally have meetings with people who share their computer screens. A ton of them don't have any type of ad blocker installed.. including people who work in IT/Development.
 
Lol 100% they are just like Google, Amazon, & etc...
Just assume everyone is listening/spying online. It's probably the most realistic scenario.
 
GreatestHits said:
Yeah dude, meta-data, welcome to the NSA in 1993...
Click to expand...

Yeh that's my point, an institution with enough resources doesn't even need to do the microphone thing, they can use everything else that they know and guess the rest. And the probabilities work out successfully a lot more frequently than we'd all, suspect.
 
Check your settings, does Facebook have access to the microphone? It doesn't for me. (And messenger can only use the microphone while the app is open)

qVvKf41.jpg
Click to expand...
 
I never trust ad sites anyway so I don't know who to laugh at more, the people buying my info or the people paying for ads (in some cases, might be the same group, no?).
 
Google is for sure listening. If you open Google Now while watching TV, it can tell you what show you're watching. Yes, there's a button that you have to touch to get it to do that, but how does it know that you're watching TV to display that button?
 
subrock said:
Check your settings, does Facebook have access to the microphone? It doesn't for me. (And messenger can only use the microphone while the app is open)
Click to expand...

There is a setting that can be turned off in Android. But just because there isn't one listed in iOS, doesn't mean the app isn't using it.
 
Hari Seldon said:
If they were streaming data from your mic you could easily catch that with wireshark or something. The bandwidth would be huge.
Click to expand...

If this was a real feature it would likely simply scan the audio, convert to keyword text and send that as normal data from the app. Very little bandwidth used and you wouldn't isolate it from other data streams with network monitoring tools. They could also easily encrypt such converted text so it's hard to find too.

Plenty of tech solution to make this a reality. Also if you're using voice assistance such as Siri or Cortana they're already listening and converting audio anyhow.
 
Facebook can be telling the truth in that their app isn't listening. It doesn't stop the thousands of different free SDKs, frameworks and middleware used by the vast majority of apps and games for stuff like analytics, advertising and other services from doing so and then using the data to buy targeted ads on Facebook, especially on Android where apps can freely register always-running services on the system.
 
I'd imagine this is going on, one way or another. We all know now how much power the NSA etc have with our modern tech. They can do whatever they want and while they were doing it under the radar for a while, successfully making their level of spying seem like tin foil hat nonsense, once Snowden outed them our governments have been desperately trying to legalise all of their illegal activity.

In the main I guess it doesn't matter, it's just a huge mass of data that no human will ever see, there's simply too much data about us out there. Of course the problem comes when they do take interest in you. Imagine a creepy NSA agent who moves in next door to you and fancies learning more about you and your family than you'd ever want anyone to know.

I saw a thread here the other day about a guy who bought a hotel and set the whole place up so he could spy on his guests. He did it for decades and studied people, watched them have sex etc. Imagine that guy with this level of access. Now imagine he's a pedo for instance and we all know kids are getting phones younger and younger these days.

We're sleep walking into a fucking nightmare. The level of control they have over people now is huge because of this. I can only imagine the minute anyone with even a hint of radical ideas gets close to power and if they've got skeletons in their closet the security services WILL know, in detail, and be able to blackmail you. I pretty much take it as a given right now. Give those in power the power to do this and they WILL abuse it.
 
Happened to me with regards to a new matress. Me and the wife had talked about it in and off for a week or so and sure enough I had started seeing ads in my news feed for matresses. Other than verbally talking about it I hadn't made a search or anything of that sort. I thought it was just a very odd coincidence.
 
One way to detect if they are is to dump your network info and see how many packets are going to Facebook. There shouldn't be very many as it's only looking for notifications.
 
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