- Your Devices Are (Probably) Not Listening To You
There is a common idea that our devices are using their microphones to spy upon us. I’m certain that some devices do, but most don’t.
Under wiretapping and recording consent laws in many jurisdictions, such listening is forbidden. Many platforms, devices, and operating systems also indicate to the user when the camera or microphone is in use. Instead of listening in via a microphone, tracking is handled by more subtle means.
Thinking about travelling to France? While on your phone, you might stop for a moment longer on adverts or posts about travel or about French cuisine. You might linger on a post by a French speaker. Perhaps you research travel plans online on a site that has a partnership with an advertising network or which has social widgets tied to social media. Eventually, you’ll see more and more posts about France and travelling there.
Every little interaction you have across the web – no matter how seemingly inconsequential – can be collated to build a profile on you and target content towards you. It is the entire strategy and purpose of many billion-dollar companies.
Take the story of retailer Target identifying a teen girl as pregnant before even her father knew. There was no recording there; it was careful identification of patterns of behaviour.
There is some great discussion on the topic of devices tracking without listening from Simon Willison in his post, I still don’t think companies serve you ads based on spying through your microphone, and from Jonathan Zeller in McSweeney’s with Calm Down—Your Phone Isn’t Listening to Your Conversations. It’s Just Tracking Everything You Type, Every App You Use, Every Website You Visit, and Everywhere You Go in the Physical World.
Whenever people attempt to test microphone listening, they often end up scrolling around trying to find the thing they were testing for anyway, thus tailoring what they’re served and playing into confirmation bias.
Thinking a microphone is listening to what you say is simple and easy to comprehend. The idea that everything you do is being tracked and analysed by systems so complex you can barely conceptualise them is much more abstract.
I personally find this sort of ever-present and inescapable tracking much more insidious than any microphone listening in.