this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023
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[–] [email protected] 96 points 10 months ago (12 children)

So, I don't trust them to have actually done what I'm going to describe, (and honestly I've just accepted that even with everything off, they're still giving me ads based on stuff I've only talked about and never clicked or written anything), but:

The programs that recognize specific phrases(Ok Google), are always separate from normal voice recognition (and much much lighter in terms of processing). So, if they weren't Google, they might have left the "Ok Google" recognition on, but not process anything else that the mic receives.

They're probably still listening in though.

[–] [email protected] 45 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Not necessarily you or your case, but I'm still convinced that a lot of people just have confirmation bias (only noticing it when it happens and discounting the thousands of otherwise innocent ads). There's also subconscious ad effects, like you were only talking about it to begin with because your saw it somewhere because it's been spreading by weird of mouth from people who initially saw an ad

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Most of it is people on the same network as you searching for a thing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's not just that either. Google knows who your family is. They know who lives with you because of location data. So any time those people search for anything regardless of whether they're on your home network, they likely serve ads to whole families at a time when one person searches for something.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 10 months ago

That's the gist of how it likely works; the wake word is detected by an "always on" audio DSP, but a software mode prevents the passing of microphone data back up to the SoC. I'm actually quite familiar with Amazon Echo engineering design, and they implement the "mute" feature in a manner that takes privacy seriously: the LED indicator on that button is hardwired to only turn on when the microphone is literally powered off. Thus, an Echo device can't even manage such a cheeky response, nor can a software bug or hack enable listening while the mute button is lit.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What you describe is actually how it works. If they actually sent all you say to their servers, it would be trivial to detect with a network analyser.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

And if they were found to be sending it all the time, holy fuck the fines would end the company.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Lol, what are you talking about? When was the last time the FTC ended a company over shady privacy practices?

Amazon would get a fine that would amount to like 0.001% of one day's profits.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 10 months ago

I will say that that's exactly how the google voice api works. Of course it's all in a black box, but that's how the documentation describes it and how it functions when making a voice app

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[–] [email protected] 88 points 10 months ago (40 children)

The amount of amazon > google grift in the comments as if they're not both spying on you is so cute :)

[–] [email protected] 27 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (16 children)

These threads are always full of fucking bootlickers and paid shills.

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[–] [email protected] 46 points 10 months ago (22 children)

This is why we don't have such devices

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (4 children)

Sound's like it's just not sending the data back to Daddy Google. The OK Google/Alexa bit is done on a custom chip on the device. Clearly that bit isn't being turned off, but anything after that isn't being sent anywhere.

Probably just saves support calls this way from idiots who turn it off and forget.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

"Probably" is a great way to protect your privacy haha

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[–] [email protected] 41 points 10 months ago (7 children)

Voice assistants are money losing products. If they can do something like processing the wakewords on the device before chosing to send to a server they will. These companies are far too stingy to continuously stream audio to their servers

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

Back in the day when everything had to be processed server-side sure.

Now we have purpose-built hardware helping work this shit out. The devices are basically capable of handling native language resolution locally. They're no longer need to farm the data out. I still don't think they're doing this we would see it in the open source operating systems, but if they wanted to any late model cell phone would be absolutely fine parsing out your interests from your conversations. Hell, I'm sure the contents of this dictation I'm making now are being reduced and added to my social graph at Google.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I think this should be fairly easy to test yourself. Just disconnect from the WAN, say the wake word, and see if the device responds.

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[–] [email protected] 35 points 10 months ago (2 children)

only if phones can be like thinkpads which you can easily remove say the audio card from its motherboard.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (5 children)

Then how would you use it as a phone?

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'd love a "phone" that was just a mobile internet-connected device. I very rarely use it as an actual phone, primarily just for text, email, and web browsing.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)
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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

OK boomer

/s

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Connect a headset via 3.5mm jack or Bluetooth Snowden explains how in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucRWyGKBVzo

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Doesn't matter if the spyware is hardware installed in your SOCs!

Good ol Lenovo.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (7 children)

If Alexa, Cortana and Siri aren't always listening, how can they pick their names out of conversations?

[–] [email protected] 44 points 10 months ago (9 children)

Want an honest answer?

Onboard are >=2 bits of code. At least one of those is a specific system trained to recognize a "wake word". This specific system (ostensibly) doesn't send anything to an outside party. Its entire job is to recognize one wake phrase: Alexa, Ok Google, or Siri, and then if that wake phrase is used it responds and tells the second system to listen. As you can imagine, this is a pretty easy job to get right 80% of the time. So that can be put on a chip. So then it does its job, and it's the second system that sends everything to an internet service for whatever reason.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 10 months ago

I didn't ask for honesty!

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[–] [email protected] 24 points 10 months ago (2 children)

There are actually 2 processors in the devices. 1 that constantly listens for a keyword, Al la, Alexa, Hey Google. When it hears it it quickly spins up another "computer" that then sends your voice back and forth to the servers for processing and response. It's part of the reason that the listen word isn't easily customized.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago

It still stores the name triggers, even incorrect matches (last I checked, which was years back).
The recordings can be played back from account history.
The one time I looked at some random, it was mostly snippets of my conversations with friends.
Creepy.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Also, why isn't there a slide cover to physically cover the camera, and why can't I turn off the mic and camera separately? So I just use one of those black foam stickers to cover the camera.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

One Plus 7 Pro had a camera that would physically dissappear when not in use.

Was my favorite phone for a while

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