Is anyone monitoring popular apps to check if they're listening?

No, Facebook and Instagram are not monitoring conversations. Yes, many security researchers routinely examine traffic from these apps to see what’s being communicated with the servers.

Recording and interpreting speech would require a lot of CPU (if done on device) or network bandwidth (if uploaded to the cloud). Enough that it would be immediately obvious if apps were trying to do this.

That is, if they even could. iOS limits what apps can even do in the background and shows an icon when the microphone is in use in the background. Again, it would be obvious if apps were listening.

But let’s assume that somehow they managed to avoid all of these pitfalls and they were listening to conversations, performing speech to text, and uploading your conversations. This would require communication with their servers, which isn’t difficult to extract through basic reverse engineering. Many security researchers reverse engineer these communications on a regular basis to look for bugs, some of which can be worth six figures in these companies’ bounty programs. If there was an API for uploading your secret conversations, it would be the holy grail discovery for a security researcher. Someone would have found it.

The myth persists because coincidences will happen in high numbers at scale. If hundreds of millions of people are spending hours on social media each week, some number of them will see ads related to some conversation they had recently by pure random chance. Add in a general distrust for big tech companies right now and some subset of people will become convinced that their coincidences are evidence of a conspiracy.

If they are not actually listening, has someone mapped out how I get an ad related to a verbal conversation? What did they do to put the pieces together? I would imagine several different scenarios to get an actual match - but Ive wondered this at least a couple of times (too close a coincidence that is).

> Is there any evidence of this?

There is a Reply All episode from 2017 about it. The answer was no.

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr

How do Android and iOS known when you say "OK Google" or "Hey Siri" if they are not listening all the time? Or, is it accepted that they are?

I wonder if anyone is monitoring the apps you can get on pirate bay (windows, photoshop, etc.)

Good question. iPhones tell you when applications access the mic or camera using an indicator light along the top, and I haven’t noticed unusual hardware access patterns from any of the popular apps that I use. But like most other users, I’m not always paying attention, and I don’t keep track of every access.

I was at the Zurich airport while I had a connecting flight to Barcelona from Belgrade. My friend and I briefly spoke about Zlatibor (a city in Serbia), 30 seconds later I got an ad for a hotel in Zlatibor, in the middle of Zurich Airport. We never spoke about or searched for Zlatibor.

If there was any evidence I’m sure the EFF would be talking about this.

https://mobile.twitter.com/eff/status/1164331076375814144?la...

If this did happen, some 12-year-old with WireShark would probably make national news. In other words, Facebook and Instagram are probably 3 steps ahead of you. Whether that should scare or console us, well, that's up to you.

I have learned one thing, regardless of assumptions about if they are listening... never name your smart speaker "computer", the number of false triggers is frustrating as heck.

Haven't checked but couldn't you make one that does and compare data usage volume?

But "listening, on everyone" and "all the time" are not necessary assumptions.

There is so much misinformation in these comments about so many topics. It’s weird. Like bots or a hired damage control media agency that are meant to diffuse certain topics anytime they come up.

> Is there any evidence of this?

No, because this is a conspiracy. Whoever claims something like that should prove it and not the other way around.