Fun, sure, but not an experiment that would actually be meaningful.

The data from your phone’s microphone doesn’t magically appear in Google’s advertising servers. It would have to go through a lot of steps before it gets there, and one of the first steps is in your home (if you’re on WiFi). One can analyze the traffic/data that leaves their phone.

It’s good to be cautious, but worrying about your phone’s microphone is potentially like worrying about your windows while leaving your front door open.

Yet again, someone mistakes an anecdote for evidence. And evidence is also not the plural form of anecdote.

I’m sure we have people here who are tech-savvy enough to have actually examined the kinds of data that their phone is sharing.

If you have something like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, then yeah, those would be sending voice data back, and yeah, they could probably use it for advertising. But as far as I know, there is no evidence that phones are “always listening” and “always sending information back” when they’re idle.

I agree on the point of security theatre. I think the tracking stuff provides more actual useful information, but I also imagine it’s more for reactionary investigations rather than pre-emptive protections.

I could be wrong, though.

I’d call it both. Hassling people for taking sunscreen or water onboard is probably mostly theatre. All of the tracking and scanning is probably what they actually use to find any naughty people.

Your comment reminded me of the time I tried to connect my new phone number to my accounts, but had trouble with Amazon and AirBnB because the last guy with the number forgot to update his accounts.

Amazon told me it’d have to delete the old account before allowing me to connect my new number.

That’s not even the worst one though.

AirBnB gave me no other option than to log in to the other guy’s account through nothing but the SMS recovery code (which came to my phone since I have his old number now), starting the account recovery process from within his account, and then removing the phone number from his account.

After logging out (and closing the private browsing window and turning off the VPN), I was then able to link the phone number to my account. (And yes, I tried everything else – from within my account, it told me “Sorry, this number is linked to another account”)

Never had a problem with AirBnB or the new phone number since then though!

Trying to stop kids from using drugs on school property is “stupid shit”?

It’s not surveilling children, it’s surveilling the byproducts of vaping.

…so kids can freely vape in school buildings during school hours?

people share phone numbers to people they personally know.

This is about Signal having the phone numbers. I don’t think anybody “personally knows” Signal…

Yup. My bank was even “translating” passwords to PINs behind the scene specifically so your password for the website would be the same as your password on the telephone.

I was wondering why 1 year was in the red category, but then I realized that that time could decrease quite a bit over time with technological advances

EDIT: typo

Figured as much. I thought that was just “standard”, but even “standard” can be a lot to expect lol

Passwords can be leaked, mostly by bad security on server side.

Wouldn’t this be solved by storing only hashed passwords?

That sounds legit. If your GPS location is on at all times (assuming this is on your cellphone), then they’ve got enough geolocation data to associate you to your partner.

And if it’s off? Your SIM card is acting like a GPS (though a less-accurate one than your phone). Do you trust your mobile service provider to not be selling this data? (And this would be even more of a factor if they’re also your partner’s service provider, and/or your ISP)

Exactly. They definitely could, but there’d also be potential legal issues, and it’d just be much more expensive to analyze sound data.

If it’s done on each device, then their battery power would suck, and performance would decline. Sure, they could do that, but I imagine most phone manufacturers would rather sell more phones and make money from app companies (Meta, Google) who pay to have their apps pre-installed on the phone. Or Samsung and Apple, who have their own ecosystems for mining data like Google does.

If they were instead just uploading audio to central servers (which could mitigate legal issues due to “anonymizing” the data), then they’d be paying for the computational power to analyze all that data.

Again, completely possible, and likely in use with things like Alexa and Google Home. But on our phones (and laptops for that matter), they have so many other cheaper ways to get probably the same quality of information.

I think “the microphones are listening when they’re off” is still a conspiracy theory at this point. It’s not really needed to get enough information.

Are there any ways that Google could find out that you’re interacting together?

• Do you share an IP address/router?
• Do you watch YouTube videos in that language?
• Do you use any messaging apps where you speak that language with other people, but also speak with your partner?
• Do you access any Google services (with a Keyboard for that language installed) that your partner also accesses?
• Do you use location services that could pinpoint both of your locations to the same street address?
• Does your partner interact with any of the people you’re learning that language with? (E.g., Social media friends, "Contact"s, live in the same geographic region)
• Is your device on the same network as your partner’s*? (Wi-Fi or Bluetooth)

I’m not saying these are all ways that Google uses, but I believe that each of them are ways that Google would be able to associate that language to your partner.

Who would have thought.

It’s impossible to “of think”.

The guy who’s likely to become Canada’s next PM wants to do this too.

That’s exactly what an LLM would say…

Not anymore, they tampered with it