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Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones (www.the-independent.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 77 points 1 year ago* (3 children)

Wasn't there just a storey a couple days ago that apps where not doing this but taking screenshots and videos on the screen and sending that. And both iOS and Android have the microphone notification now.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    I know I'm usually on the more paranoid side, but I've always assumed everything I do on a smartphone is potentially being monitored via camera or mics.

    If the apps are just taking screenshots, or recording a few seconds of data via mic, it would be almost guaranteed that certain corrupt (and also paranoid) governments that are dismissive of privacy rights could force or bribe those apps to allow them to also access screens, mics, and cameras anyway, right?

    I'm in the U.S., and especially with how glitchy my phone has suddenly become over the last few months, I'm just at the point where I just assume that's what's going on.

    I had the same android for like 4 years without many issues, then suddenly around February it just became almost impossible to use. Weird glitchy things with the size of the tool bar at the bottom of my screen and the popup keyboard. Redirect notifications all the time for certain websites, and my VPN connection is just constantly interrupted and having to be reset.

    I finally was like fuck it, this is an old phone so maybe that's it. Brand new phone, but most of the same issues.

    I use signal instead of text most of the time, and switched a lot of things to proton mail, but if someone is potentially recording your screen, does it really matter if what you're doing is encrypted?

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Which VPN provider are you using? How do you know they are not the one monitoring your phone?

    Did you obtained your phone from a trusted source, such as an official seller. Some phones purchased from overseas might have "International ROM" installed by the seller, which compromises the integrity of the device.

    Consider having a trusted tech friend look over your phone to see if the device has malware installed.

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  • [–] 9 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

    I use proton VPN, but no I always just get my phones from Amazon bc it's cheap. Never was a real problem in the past, but now that the U.S. is (officially) a giant Oligopoly, probably not a wise idea.

    I don't really know any tech friends that are super in the know about that kind of thing. I have a paid Norton 360 subscription that does frequent scans for malware and says it never finds anything, but honestly wouldn't even be surprised to learn I'm paying for a useless subscription.

    I'm also in a state that was involved in a huge government data breach a few years back. They didn't really go into it too much when it happened, but apparently just about everyone over the age of 18 had their private data compromised.

    The only reason I even bring that up is bc our current Governor who has always been a power hungry authoritarian boot licker renewed the Executive Order for a state of emergency for a cyber incident that our previous governor first created when the data breach happened several years ago.

    When he "renewed" the order, he also slipped in a new section that granted authority to the director of one of his cabinet's agencies, Governor's office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP), to handle the emergency as he sees fit.

    What's even more concerning is that on the same day he renewed this order, he restructured GOHSEP so that it is now under the control of the state's National Guard, gave the former director of GOHSEP a new title, and then named a member of the Guard "acting director."

    He's been very vague about what the renewal was about, but it allegedly had something to do with updating the OMV/DMV data base for the state. Since then he has also created a hiring freeze for the state, which would seem to indicate that whoever was acting director is now indefinitely the director named in the executive order until the governor decides to lift the hiring freeze.

    Even for someone not already paranoid, and without everything happening at a national level, that would all be a bit concerning right? I'm not a journalist, but I've been trying to get people to pay attention to it.

    For some reason, no actual local journalists seem to be willing to point this out, but it's all publicly available information.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Proton is a trusted VPN/company.

    Norton on PC might be useful, but on mobile, it's probably as good as a placebo.

    Good luck with your state government. Sounds like a nightmare.

    The reason no local journalist is critical of the state government is because there are no independent journalists left. Google and Meta have sucked up all the advertising dollars, so small local independent media cannot survive. The journalists have to work for mega corporations who dictate what they are allowed to write.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago*

    try swappa for phones, when i was looking for a new phone because the Problematic pixel 5a died after a small drop, i was comparing amazon to swappa, swappa you can negotiate a lower price from the seller, and you can filter out the "corporate sellers " because they tend to so more used phones for a higher price than it should be, and you can ask questions about the phone being sold giving you more idea what your getting into.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    i used to think this as well (i have never used any facebook apps), but last night something happened that made me question it.

    My wife and i were going through a chipotlane that was right next to a Popeye’s. As we were waiting i looked over to popeyes and saw some posters for their new pickle chicken stuff and asked my wife “the fuck is a pickle ‘glaze’?”

    she said “i have no idea but i kinda want some fried pickles now.”

    literally a few seconds later she opens instagram on her phone and is shown a video of a person making pickle brined chicken.

    yes yes it could be a coincidence, but i am a lot less certain of that now.

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  • [–] 20 points 1 year ago

    The way I've heard it is that it's not just coincidence nor microphone scanning, but just the effectiveness of targeted ads in general. You could be within wifi range of other users who are searching for pickle stuff or you yourselves have a history of pickle purchases, etc. This stuff is scary specific already.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago* (2 children)

    https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-21083

    I guarantee you that the green privacy dot means diddly squat.

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  • [–] 10 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

    Past vulnerabilities doesn't mean there is active mpdern vulnerabilities especially ones in widely tested operating systems that's exploited by as many apps as people claim are listening when security researchers also regularly reverse engineer and analyze the source code of popular apps to figure out what they're doing. You can decompile Android apps pretty easily to see what they're doing. Some are obfuscated so it takes some effort.

    Its one thing to claim there's some a system level bypass for the icon that the NSA uses to spy on its enemies, it's another thing to claim that it's being exploited on a wide scale by a tech companies on different apps, iOS and Android, multiple versions/devices.

    The reality is that we leak tons of info through other mediums that are easier and cheaper to collect than through microphones.

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