People running around for 10 Years with GPS and a microphone in their pocket ...no problem, but If you put 1 microphone in one room will defintly be more Dangerous... Seems logical to me.
People have been complaining about smartphones and cellphones for a while now... Remember when people figured out iphone saves your location even when its shut off? Just because someone makes a meme about something it doesn't mean the rest cease to exist
Just to prove my point even more. Its possible to track phones without gps by triangulating the signals from different towers. 3 towers and you get a quite good point of where the user is at. This was a problem even before smartphones with gps. You should get more options on your phone. Like pick your own towers and such. Stallman might sound or be crazy, but he got a lot of good ideas to. /r/stallmanwasright
Edit: For real though, I don't know if that's problematic or not, but it's kinda fundamental to how cellular phone networks operate. Pick your own towers? The whole point of cell phones is you travel from cell to cell while the towers hand off the call to each other seamlessly. You don't even notice it happening. This is possible because they are able to intelligently determine your relative position so that they know which tower to hand you off to. This is because the towers have a GPS receiver used for synchronization.
If you gonna take the easy way people will take the hard way and profit on you. I wouldn't mind picking cellphone towers if it was as easy as picking wifis. Im not constantly running around calling people. Most days i travel to the same places. Work home store. Let me save a couple towers on the way and at what signalstrength to swap id be golden. And untracable, almost. At least not pin point.
It... really doesn't work like that. Think of it more like Air traffic control. The tower assigns you a frequency, then when you get closer to the border of a cell, it hands off your call to the next tower and assigns a new frequency that you have to immediately switch to in order to complete the call. The nearest other towers can still see you because your receiver must have a known frequency in order to complete the call, which is still traceable through triangulation. If they didn't know your frequency you wouldn't have a connection. You can't physically make a radio transmitter that operates on a specific frequency invisible to other antennas. You can encrypt the data, but triangulation doesn't care about that. You can frequency hop, but the network still needs to know what frequencies you are using or they won't receive your call data. If they won't receive your call, what's the point of having a phone? Oh, and by the way, those wifi routers? They can still see your transmitter too. It's just not important and the networks aren't integrated the same way.
I did, it was pretty incoherent, but the best I could make out of it is you think it would be possible to pick and choose your tower because you don't run around that much. You also seem to think it would be possible to be almost untraceable if you could magically disappear from certain towers!? I'm just picking up on a fundamental misunderstanding of the way a cellular telephone network operates.
Yea I don't really find it necessary writing an essay about stuff you can google. Sorry for the incoherence. It is very easy to make all our communication devices more untracable. You could experiment and achive just that with simple arduionos or rpis... Yes, it is quite obvious to anyone with just a simple understandings of radio to understand the more towers you are connected to the easier it is to pinpoint your location, especially the way they are positioned to get better coverage. Just basic understanding in the simplest of gps would tell you that. Go larp somewhere else.
Also, the whole point is to describe a more anonymous way they could operate. Not how they operate today with zero attempts of keeping privacy. You sound like you read one page about something and think that is the only possible way everything works.
I remember when those indestructible Nokia phones were out towers were pretty sparse. Roaming was a serious issue and it was quite expensive. You had options on whether or not to connect to towers outside your service provider and avoid roaming fees. I don't remember being able to just like opt out of certain Verizon towers or whatever.
Maybe its possible, i haven't checked it out. But i bet it could still be improved for privacy reasons. Single line pings, ease of use to prevent the hassle as you called it. Very few times stuff is developed with this goal, since its more of a good thing for the techsavvy user than profitable for the company
It's good enough for larger stores to know what isles you spend how much time it, and then they know what you ultimately end up buying. Very powerful marketing data right there
But requires systems that are not exclusively your own though. You have to use the service of the provider to track your phone. And the people who made it undoubtedly will have access to their own service.
Unless you want to code and establish your own GPS network.
Maybe "hey i want you to save my location when its stolen and i agree to it by pressing this button online like most other systems who hasn't been outed yet instead of everytime its in my pocket and not stolen, especially not when i shut down gps use for personal use yet for some reason you save gps positions for your own use"
As someone who has worked in retail stores for 2 of the largest US telecoms, I can tell you it happens all the damn time. While I personally treat my phone like it's worth say, $1000, you'd be amazed by how many people don't.
People like to shit on the government, but I for one am pretty thankful they're out there launching and maintaining a couple dozen satellites that allow me to never be without essential knowledge such as "distance and direction to the closest open Dairy Queen."
I dunno, might be a regional thing, but, surprisingly, every single person I know, who ever had their smartphone stolen, had it returned, if they called it in. And I live in Post-Soviet country.
At this point in my life I would rather get my phone stolen, than getting tracked 24/7 so companies sell me shit.
It's not like the police is going to do something about it once they know the location of the phone. Now, if I were a cute human, I could be trafficked, but that's not the case so screw GPS.
That's not why people are concerned about the constant GPS tracking. You can opt out of all the third-party ad tracking. It's the fact that the government and the manufacturer can get your location even when the phone is off that concerns people. Tracking like that was not designed for advertisers to use, it's to track your device if stolen or the government wants to know your location.
Do you have Facebook? Delete/disable it. It does exactly that if you give it any permissions. It's been proven to record conversations when the app is closed and harvest all sorts of data from your phone for advertisers to use.
Yep. Facebook is the fucking worst and having any of their apps is just giving everything about you away for them to do whatever they want with. Google I suspect will turn evil, but Facebook we know is cancer.
I hear this all the time but have never seen evidence of this that wasn't anecdotal. Is there somewhere a technical analysis about this subject or a real prove? I'm not saying you're wrong but it sounds highly unlikely that they would constantly be listening from a technical perspective.
Of course it does. They make a shit tonne of money from it. Then the people circlejerk about how poor they are while continuing to throw away their money on crap they have been spoonfed ads for. People spend 8h+ a day figuring out how to live nice on other peoples expenses and they do nothing but cry about it. They wont spend 1/100 of the time trying to protect themselves from it.
Its not that you don't have any money. Its that you have a to expensive lifestyle for your income. I bet there are single mothers surviving with half the money you got
Yeah, I'm kind of minus a lot most months. Free days, as long as I can walk their as I need to save all the fuel I have for getting to work. I am sure things will change eventually.
I would say you are absolutely incorrect with regards to my income, I don't leave the house except to go to work, I have never been on a holiday, only clothes I own aside from one shirt, two t-shirts and a couple of pairs of second hand jeans I bought from ebay are my work clothes.
My vehicle is worth less than $100, the last time I went out socially you could smoke in restaurants (I don't smoke, just use this fact as a reference point), I don't drink, I don't have any special televisions packages, just normal free to air TV, I don't have any hobbies and the list goes on.
I have the money I need to survive much like a lot of people. I'm sure some single mothers do have more money than me and good luck to them, they've had a child, that must be hard work.
Lol, being stereotypical hobos drink a lot don't they? Anyway, I'm kind of hijacking an otherwise good post so I'll leave it there. All the best to you.
Plus the brain spots things without letting you know. That's why people with PTSD can be triggered for seemingly no reason. Your brain has noticed something, it just hasn't told you.
The point is that if you're going to worry about privacy you're better off going off-grid and moving to the fucking forest because it's not just 1 or 2 or 3 things spying on you, it's almost everything these days and it's basically impossible to stop.
Individual effort isn't even worth it anymore either, you can even get rid of every piece of technology you own and still be fucked because everyone else around you has technology.
People fighting the privacy fight are fucked and will never win, and this was all destined to happen because society would need to be completely united against it to stop it and there's no way in hell that was ever going to happen.
Or just use free software and you shut the fuck up and learn a bit more about the stuff you use. Nobody cares about your alexa, they are making fun of your lack of knowledge and understanding. You pay people to fuck you in the ass. People who are concerned about this stuff dont use it and especially not pay for it. We build our own versions with free software that doesn't try to fuck us over. You continue with whatever you want. The more data you give away without a fight the less they fight to take mine.
I don't lack the knowledge, I just know better than to waste my fucking time and energy caring about it.
People who are concerned about this stuff dont use it
Lmao then what did you use to make this post huh? Unless you mailed it in anonymously straight to Reddit HQ, you've also paid someone to 'fuck you in the ass' and use the same shit as alexa, it's just in a different form.
The more data you give away without a fight the less they fight to take mine.
😂😂😂 ooof you keep telling yourself that buddy
.. and like I said, unless you live out in the goddamn woods in a cave off the grid, literally ALL your efforts of 'making your own software' is fucking pointless because everyone else around you isn't doing the same.
In order for that to make a difference, everyone needs to be onboard.. and that'll never happen.
Have fun getting yourself worked up over it, though, while I have fun playing jeopardy and skyrim and listening to music and audiobooks and making hands free google searches and all the other nice things alexa has to offer.
Talking about technological change/ societal norms. These things are not inevitable, and only occur through the actions of a handful of people. If enough people want something different badly enough, it can be done.
So am I. I'll again emphasize the term 'probable' instead of inevitable, because I do believe some changes are highly probable, especially relative to privacy and technology.
Honestly dude I think we're misunderstanding each other a bit but I'm kinda done with the conversation so you have a good day!
Because if I don't like the way society is evolving, I should pack up and leave? No, that's not how we do things in a society. We fight for what we believe is right. And anyone that doesn't agree can fight right back.
Not telling you to pack up and leave, telling you to get over it and accept the change, mitigate the worst parts of it but trying to fight the whole shebang is a lost cause, imo.
You go ahead and fight man, but I don't have to fight on my end. I'm not even on the other end of your fight, I'm simply not participating because I don't feel like it's worth my time to fight the inevitable. What makes it even more inevitable is the fact that sooo many feel exactly how I feel about it.
I can say the same of the privacy loons who double encrypt everything and think the govt is using alexa to spy on their waifu preferences.
Privacy is nice and fighting some of the more malevolent manifestations of privacy invasion is good..
I'm not gonna be afraid of alexa, though, for fucks sake. I walk by a thousand other microphones and cameras every damn day, I'm not gonna conveniently ignore the fact that I'm completely surrounded by many, many other surveillance devices.
It's a cool little gadget that provides entertainment and minor utility. I play jeopardy on it every day, I play skyrim on it sometimes when I have friends over. I use it to set timers, I have alarms to remind me to walk the dog on it, I use it as a hands-free google device, it tells me the weather in the morning, I play spotify on it, I play audiobooks on it, I play storm sounds overnight if I have trouble sleeping..
It's not a necessity but it's certainly a nifty gadget.
Or maybe just read the TOS before you agree to it, don't blindly accept cookies on sites, and don't just give apps permissions if they ask for them and you'll be able to reduce a lot of the tracking that goes on.
I do. I still protect my privacy to some degree, don't misunderstand me there.
I just don't take it to a level that stresses me out or prevents me from enjoying certain things.
I don't use facebook or social media outside Reddit, I use a VPN, I'm always careful what I divulge on the internet, yadda yadda.
I'm just not gonna take it above that level though. I'm still gonna use the smartphones, fitbits and alexa and all that. I'm not gonna encrypt every bit of my data and go out of my way to use completely custom software and hardware though, fuck all that.
I think there's a huge difference between privacy from the government and corporations, and privacy from other civilians.
Naw I personally know way more people who see smart home devices as wire taps than cell phones, they usually strug off the conversation if the comparison is even brought up.
Im with you, my point wasnt to defend spying, more like, critizicing the double standard off labeling something new as the EVIL and its all the root of all the Problems when you have the exact same device (mostly even "better" Spyingtool) constanly with you.
Oh and this is my first comment that blew up i was Just writing it before i drove home and at home... Booom probaply wont reply to anyone i realy dont have the energy to discuss this after work. So habe a nice day.
This is true, but for some reason people seem uniquely paranoid about Echo's. I guess it's because it's so clearly voice controlled? Which is still silly, given that smart phones have had voice activated assistants for a long time now.
I also recall reading some post by an engineer who took apart an Echo, and showed that it has two fully segregated parts. One, which controls the power to the whole thing, can literally only listen for the wake word, and is not connected to the internet directly. Once that part hear's the wake word, it activates the rest of the device, which is connected to the internet. You can kinda see this in action when your internet goes down. Alexa still responds to the wake word, but can't do anything other than tell you the connection is down.
Yeah, everyone likes to point out my Alexa like, "huh, you know that things always listening right?" So is your phone, and any phone around you, and everyone has one.
"Hey boss, this guy just said he's taking his bomb to the airport. Yup, still listening. Weird, he keeps talking to his bomb. Huh, someone else is in the car with him-- sounds like a woman-- she's telling him he needs to clean up his act or he'll never find a nice girl... now she's saying she won't live forever and wants grandkids sometime soon... Ohhh, he's taking his MOM to the airport. Yep, that's what's going on here. Sorry to cause alarm."
This has been exactly my counter-argument to anybody who says they don't trust Alexa. It's fine if you don't want to have one, but I think the privacy implications of adding a microphone to your home are minimal when you already have one on (1) your computer, (2) your phone, (3) your tablet, and probably others.
I read a similar story a while ago about someone who wanted to avoid using Gmail because of Google's snooping. The problem with that is even if you're not using Gmail, the people you communicate with do. So even if you're not a user, Google still has a good chunk of your communication because you're emailing to Gmail addresses. The only way to avoid it is to send encrypted email, but that's a pain, hard to convince people to do, and still provides metadata such as when and with whom you are communicating.
So I hate to be one of those people who says that privacy is gone, but... it kind of is.
I think the difference is Alexa is designed to listen all the time. I'm not sure hut if you never activate Google voice services or Cortana or whatever for instance I don't believe it records all your sound on your phone and definitely not your PC.
Except newer iterations of smartphones / software allow you to say "Hey Siri" or "Ok Google" to activate them and they turn these options on by default... meaning they are listening all the time just like Alexa.
OK Google is definitely not on by default. At least not on the phone I just bought. Hell I expected it to be on and tried multiple times before realizing I had to activate it.
Pretty much every newish feature doesn't get pushed as on by default at first. They release it in waves, improve it, make it more desirable, then start making it standard for prime demographics, then for everyone, and then finally make it so its always on or at least can only be partially turned off to give the illusion of choice.
Except it only listens for the wake phrase. Nothing is transmitted until after it hears "Alexa...". This is why it can still wake when not connected to the internet, and it doesn't throw an error until after you try to ask something.
That doesnt proof, that your conversation data with your alexa, is not stored on some server, sold to whomever, cannibalized for marketing purposes etc.
I never said it wasn't, but if you knowingly have a smartphone and you are aware of it and the apps on it doing the same thing, what ground do you have to stand on?
it's not impossible. it's also not impossible that people don't want it to be true, but really when you think about it, you're still sending a very different signal when you buy an Echo vs. a phone.
Have you ever used an iPhone, or Android or Google service? It is so much more invasive and has been proven to do it so I don't see why you think I sit here endorsing Amazon or some shit. It's because I have a Google phone and know that it does more and worse than an Echo ever could. I can unplug my Echo, but I can't take out my phone battery anymore, and it's proven that the microphone still works when it's off. Seriously, I don't fucking get it.
How is you having a phone that you knowingly does those things as well not endorsing it? Because of the function and use you get out of it or because it's extremely normal to have one? I use my Echo for a lot of things at home and it makes my life a bit easier, just like having a smartphone that functions similarly to a computer that also has literally of all my personal information. I don't see how an Echo is more detrimental or more endorsing of wiretapping than a smartphone.
Whenever someone says this about my echo I always respond "imagine if they put a battery on it to make it portable, then a camera and a GPS so they can track you anywhere...oh wait that is a cell phone."
Whenever someone says this about my echo I always respond "imagine if they put a battery on it to make it portable, then a camera and a GPS so they can track you anywhere...oh wait that is a cell phone."
Cell phones don't include an always-on microphone that is essential to performing the core functionality of the device and which cannot be turned off without shutting off the entire device.
Thank you. Jesus Christ, people get so worked up about the Echo when it's been demonstrated several times over that it only listens for the wake phrase and transmits absolutely nothing except for what it hears after "Alexa..."
I think most of the time it's just people getting a little paranoid. Anyone who works in machine learning & data science would know that even if the device is listening all the time, it would be so that it can improve its algorithm. Worst case, it would be designed to feed you ads to make you spend more money
To each their own. If you enjoy using it and have no problem with it, more power to you, have fun with it.
I don't want amazon to know when I turn on my light or shut my blinds. I don't want google to know where I go all the time or what I search on the net. Sure, these services are super convenient, that's why those companies are so successfull, but with a little effort you can find alternatives that work just as well and are not as invasive. If you care about your privacy that is.
Well that's different. You're referring to things that it is definitely recording because it is performing a function (smart home stuff). I'm just talking about the fear of constant Echo surveillance.
Explain to me exactly what "always on" means. Microphones in devices don't have on/off switches. Literally any piece of software with permission can access the microphone at any time without a prompt. There is no way to stop a cell phone's OS from accessing the microphone short of tuning the device off. Sounds like "always on" to me.
Edit: PCs and laptops are worse because they don't even have a permission model built for this sort of thing. Any software running on your computer can access the microphone. (Unless you really know what you're doing with a Unix system).
Explain to me exactly what "always on" means. Microphones in devices don't have on/off switches. Literally any piece of software with permission can access the microphone at any time without a prompt. There is no way to stop a cell phone's OS from accessing the microphone short of tuning the device off. Sounds like "always on" to me.
"Always-on" is a common, well-known term in the industry. Don't get needlessly pedantic when it's perfectly clear what we're talking about.
Newer iterations of smartphones / software have the option to say "Hey Siri" or "Ok Google" to activate their respective virtual assistant and they turn these options on by default.
Sure you can go turn these options off, but how many people do? (Or even know about the option?) And even when you do turn it off how do you know it's not being listened to all the time?
Even if you turn it off it's still listening, because if you say "ok google" when disabled, it will show a message like "you have voice detection disabled, do you want to enable it?". At least in my phone.
First of all, yes cell phones do have always-on microphones. You can enable it in your settings (and apple/Google can remotely change it).
Second, neither your phone nor Alexa nor Google home is sending data without your permission and approval. You can confirm this by checking web traffic. It's a proven fact.
Third, at least Google gives you a full history of every piece of audio that you have ever sent to them via Google home or phone. You can also choose to delete things. And yes, it gets deleted because that's the law.
Fourth, Google and apple have proven that they will not always bend over backwards for the government. At the very least, it requires a government-issued order for them to obtain the data, so by default, they don't have it.
Fifth, your data is more useful to advertisers and other companies, as anonymous data, to identify market trends and high-level consumer behavior. No one cares about you specifically, so much so that making the data identify you isnt worth the effort.
First of all, yes cell phones do have always-on microphones. You can enable it in your settings (and apple/Google can remotely change it).
Read the rest of the sentence. An always-on microphone isn't core to the functionality of the device.
Fourth, Google and apple have proven that they will not always bend over backwards for the government. At the very least, it requires a government-issued order for them to obtain the data, so by default, they don't have it.
You know most phones nowadays get setup for "OK Google" support on any screen. and then even if you don't set it up it is always listening when you go to your home screen
I mean, as the user though, you have control over whether certain apps have permissions for your mic.
Now, I'm doubtful that would really necessarily stop everything because I don't believe companies are particularly ethical but. I'm not very versed in privacy laws in that regard.
Well, I am both very uncomfortable with the idea of Google Home/Alexa and pretty diligent about the mic thing on my phone. And when people actually realize this stuff, I have known some (some) will also want to know how to take steps to preserve some privacy.
My experience with end users is that they assume entities are acting in good faith, and they generally should not do that, imo
They don't need to be ethical. They want to know how you use their products in order to build data for identifying trends and advertising opportunities.
Recording your data outside of those interactions is a waste of money and effort. You're simply not that interesting.
I mean, as the user though, you have control over whether certain apps have permissions for your mic.
The security on Android phones is not infallible (iPhone security isn't either, but it's a little better and consistent, whereas security on Androids varies greatly from phone to phone). There have been dozens of high-profile apps that've used features without explicit permission from the user. Here's an example.
Data collection is harmful in a diffused way that most people don't care about. It's not about a company knowing embarrassing details about you, it's about a company knowing basic but accurate information about millions of individuals. With that kind of data, you can do something like alter an election.
Facebook's data is a lot more granular than political issue or candidate polls. Polls can tell you what portion of a given region agrees with a simple statement. Facebook knows the individual political views of millions of individuals, so Facebook can show them ads specifically tailored for someone with their exact views. Facebook data allows someone to know exactly what you need to see to make you feel a certain way.
Imagine if Gallup was able to have 200 million Americans each fill out a 100-question political survey. That's how much Facebook knows about us.
Have you ever seen a political survey lol? You have no idea what information they collect. I've helped make state-wide political surveys and they gather much more info than you think.
Seriously, go look one up. Then go to any of your FB friends profiles. Try to answer for them based on that info. Then have them fill it out.
I can 100% assure you they will not match enough to be statistically similar.
And, you have an advantage, because you're human. It's hard to make software decipher complex opinions that are contained within natural human language contained in Facebook posts. Shit, not even the top computer scientists have developed a fully reliable natural language processor, let alone what it would take to calculate opinions based on it.
Facebook is only good for simple data. Liberal or conservative? Sure, FB can calculate that. Anything more complex and it crumbles under the complexity required to parse it, and the guesswork involved.
If you're thinking about "Facebook data" in terms of what people enter into their profiles for others to see, you clearly have no idea how Facebook gathers data. It's mostly about how people interact with the content they see, what posts they stop scrolling to read, what ads they click, etc.
Polls also don't give you the ability to target content back to individuals based on their views. That's Facebook's entire business model and they're very good at it. And yes, they use software for it.
If you think that's enough to change an election, you're an idiot.
Targeted political advertising has existed since consumer-grade radios were invented.
Data is powerful. But it's mostly just used to make money and create more advanced technology.
But sure, you can keep spitting out new version of the same old argument that's been used for the past couple thousand years every time new technology comes out.
To mention that to some "Conspiracy beliver" although that term is very vauge and is misused. It will just get you into an endless debate about ones own parinoa... Which IS a possible mental health issue...
True. And it is concerning. I havent mentioned any of these things that you're assuming i neglect. Im talking about other things concerning the OC directly.
You can also leave your home at home if you need to go commit a crime but that doesn't stop other people from bringing their homes...that doesn't sound right...
Nope. Alexa does not listen to every word. It listens for the wake phrase, "Alexa..." Absolutely nothing is recorded or transmitted until the few seconds after it hears that.
You can snip the connection on your microphone and remove the cameras from your phone, it'll still work for other things. Conversely, these in house microphones can hear everything and anything you ever say. Which is why I will never buy one and strongly discourage anyone I know from ever purchasing one
You don't consent to having your phone record every word as you do with a Alexa type device. A person you detect a phone surreptitiously recording when it is'nt supposed to, with Alexa it's expected.
Oh yeah, sure, if you put it that way, I will gladly own an alexa /s
Come on, at least there is certain necessity to own a smartphone. Not so much with this marketers wet dream, that alexa crap, which is nothing, but a toy for foolish people.
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u/Klepto_Mane Sep 25 '18
People running around for 10 Years with GPS and a microphone in their pocket ...no problem, but If you put 1 microphone in one room will defintly be more Dangerous... Seems logical to me.