It\u2019s no secret that our phones and web browsers gather and monetize a lot of information about us, but how they do that isn\u2019t always obvious. A lot of people believe that cell phones straight-up eavesdrop on their users \u2014 43 percent of us, according to a 2019 poll conducted by \u201cConsumer Reports\u201d \u2014 and use that information to serve targeted ads. That may or may not be true, but there are definitely things you can do to protect yourself either way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As you\u2019d expect, there\u2019s some controversy over the whole question. Some journalists, notably Sam Nichols in a widely shared Vice article<\/a> from 2016, claim to have tested this personally and demonstrated an undeniable correlation between spoken phrases and the ads that are served.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Writing in \u201cWired\u201d magazine<\/a> in 2017, Antonio Garc\u00eda Martinez \u2014 formerly Facebook\u2019s first ads-targeting manager \u2014 argued that actually recording your conversations and parsing that data was more technically challenging, and less useful to Facebook than its existing data-gathering tools. In effect, it\u2019s like mining your own iron ore and coal to hand-forge a shovel when you\u2019ve already got a perfectly good excavator.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Researchers at Northeastern University<\/a> and the private security company Wandera<\/a> were interested enough to put the eavesdropping theory to the test in a laboratory setting. Both teams concluded definitively that phones weren\u2019t stealthily sending audio data back to a third party. So does that mean you should be getting fitted for a tinfoil hat? Not necessarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Recording your actual conversations and sending them back to a server somewhere would use up a big chunk of your data and generate unmanageable quantities of information, but that\u2019s not the only way your spoken words can be used. Human \u201cauditors\u201d can and do review a small percentage of interactions with Siri and Google Assistant<\/a> (and Alexa and Cortana) to help improve their performance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n If you use Siri or Google Assistant your phone legitimately listens for trigger words like \u201cOK, Google,\u201d and any app can have its own trigger words<\/a> that prompt it to take a selected action or send a predefined message back to its developer or a third party. Even more worrisome, researchers at both Northeastern and Wandera discovered that any<\/em> app on your phone can record screen captures and keystrokes \u2014 including logins, passwords and account numbers \u2014 without your knowledge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Remember those terms of service you agreed to when you started using Apple and Google services and Facebook\u2019s site and apps? Those companies know where you\u2019ve been from your phone\u2019s GPS data and where you\u2019ve logged in, they know the purchases you\u2019ve made and keywords you\u2019ve used in your emails. Many other companies have similar information, either because you use their software and services or because they\u2019ve bought it from someone else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Really, it would be amazing if the targeted ads you see weren\u2019t scarily accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can\u2019t just tape over your phone\u2019s microphone, the way you can with a laptop\u2019s webcam. What you can do is use the settings in iOS or Android to review which apps have permissions to use the mike and your location data, and turn them off on a case-by-case basis. You can leave permissions in place for a few core apps, or just toggle them back on when the apps are in use. This won\u2019t stop deliberately malicious apps, but most legitimate developers won\u2019t risk getting kicked out of the App and Play stores for breaking the rules.<\/p>\n\n\n\n More importantly, you can limit the ways companies track you across the internet. Here are a few easy options:<\/p>\n\n\n\n You might also want to opt for an alternative browser that\u2019s built around privacy. Firefox\u2019s Focus mobile browser<\/a>, for example, includes tracker blocking and other privacy measures by default. Ghostery, maker of a popular tracker-blocking browser extension for computers, has a stand-alone privacy-centered browser<\/a> for Android and iOS. Even the Tor browser, the option of choice for seriously paranoid computer users, is now available for Android<\/a>. Technical limitations<\/a> of the iOS platform mean Tor itself won\u2019t run on iPhones, but the company\u2019s Onion Browser provides some of the same functionality for Apple users.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside from those things, there\u2019s one deceptively simple step to reduce targeted ads, which many users forget: Just ask nicely<\/a>. Both iOS and Android have settings to cut down the use of targeted advertising.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Following these steps won\u2019t eliminate all of the targeted ads you see, but it will reduce the number of targeted ads you see and also increase your overall level of privacy. To get a sense for your broader digital footprint \u2014 including the information advertisers are likely to use to send you those personalized ads \u2014 use a people information service like Spokeo<\/a> to look yourself up. You may be surprised at what you find!<\/p>\n\n\n\n It\u2019s no secret that our phones and web browsers gather and monetize a lot of information about us, but how they do that isn\u2019t always obvious. A lot of people…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":112,"featured_media":23556,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[612],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23203","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-guides"],"yoast_head":"\nSo Is My Phone Listening to Me?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
How to Stop Targeted Ads (or At Least Minimize Them)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
One More Step<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
References: <\/h3>\n\n\n\n