Privacy

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Is your phone secretly listening to you? Here's an easy way to find out (www.pcworld.com)

submitted 3 weeks ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

This is a curious but not a very effective way to test. It's subject to several biases and the possibility that you happen to notice an ad related to your test topic that you wouldn't otherwise have noted. It's similar to how fortune tellers find ways to connect common patterns to an individual and make comments all seem like they could apply to you, but with ads and a topic.

With modern phone OSs, the concerning behavior also very challenging to technically achieve. Microphone enforcement is handled by the OS, so at the very least you'd probably need collusion, and that's not including the impact on battery life having the phone application processor on all the time.

[–] Taiatari 10 points 3 weeks ago

I think it is called the Barnum effect, when a person thinks very broad things are specifically related to them

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