Wifes phone is listening to her....

Forums › Android › Wifes phone is listening to her....

xpd

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#271793 27-May-2020 08:36

... way too much.

Its a Huawei Y5 2019, fully up to date, hardly any "3rd party" apps (Only uses it as a phone and for Facebook).

Recently, its taken to listening to her conversations - ALL conversations, not just phone calls.

She was recently talking to one of our kids about the Maori language, and said a couple of words in Maori... her phone then proceeded to display adverts on FB and web pages, related to Maori topics from then on.

Then yesterday she was at work and they discussed a particular product being made available in store - and guess what.... when she got home adverts for that product started appearing as adverts....

Then last night she was talking to me about some renovations and watched a quick video about some plastering, and now shes getting adverts about home reno etc.

I ran a security scan (Lookout) and thats not found any issues.

I know how Google Ads work but have never come across them changing from "listening" to someones conversations.

ANy ideas whats triggered this constant spying ? :)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Hammered
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#2492483 27-May-2020 08:39

Facebook. Google.

Keep calm, and carry on posting.

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Linux

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#2492484 27-May-2020 08:40

This is nothing new and happens to me all the time!

Handsomedan

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#2492487 27-May-2020 08:42

Happens to us all the time on iPhones...it's Facebook and Google as said above.

I talk a lot with my son about his electric skateboard and get bombed with e-skate ads.

Also if my wife and I talk about our friends moving house (we have a couple of friends doing this currently) we both get real estate and building ads.

My wife is also starting to get e-skate ads and she has no interest at all in them.

It's creepy, but it's part of having a smart phone, I guess.

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Inphinity

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#2492488 27-May-2020 08:42

xpd:

Huawei

If I wore a tinfoil hat I'd say I found the cause :P

RunningMan

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#2492490 27-May-2020 08:44

The real question is do you listen to your wife though?

dafman

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#2492493 27-May-2020 08:49

Yep, Facebook. Not only is it great for sowing dissent through spreading misinformation and conspiracy theories, you have other added-value as well.

sidefx

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#2492495 27-May-2020 08:56

Happens all the time on my partners Samsung in Facebook. Quite often on mine (Oppo) too. My guess would be Facebook\Messenger. It's almost always the ads in Facebook which seem to have an eery link to things we've only briefly talked about verbally.

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tehgerbil

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#2492496 27-May-2020 08:58

Sometimes it can be explained by a known documented phenomenon called the:

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon

In short, Baader-Meinhof phenomenon is a frequency bias. You notice something new, at least it’s new to you. It could be a word, a breed of dog, a particular style of house, or just about anything. Suddenly, you’re aware of that thing all over the place.

It explains why for instance when you get a new car or phone you realise how many other people have the same model as you.

Does this help?

Senecio

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#2492498 27-May-2020 09:00

I haven't seen any evidence of our phones listening to us but Facebook seems to translate my google searches at home into my wife's adds and her interests in my adds. While her adds are full of golf, cars & home DIY my adds are full of sewing, jewelry and pilates!

xpd

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#2492505 27-May-2020 09:15

I don't have the issue with my Huawei (P10 lite)..... I guess only thing I can tell her then, is turn off your phone when you want to talk :D

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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Rikkitic

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#2492506 27-May-2020 09:16

And people think this kind of thing is normal? Yet another reason for me to never want a smart phone!

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

timmmay

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#2492508 27-May-2020 09:16

In the latest versions of Android / iPhone I think you can revoke some permissions manually. I wonder if you can revoke microphone permissions in a way that doesn't break apps and helps with this?

kobiak

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#2492517 27-May-2020 09:37

I would double check apps permissions. eg. microphone, contacts, calls, etc. I don't experience that issue.

some apps would break/limit functionality if you disable certain permission - this is bad habit from devs and that app does not belong on my app list :D

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muppet

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#2492555 27-May-2020 09:51

Baader-Meinhof.

Lots of people have decided their phones/devices are listening to them. No one has been able to show any traffic captures/traces showing this audio being uploaded somewhere.

Maybe your phone is listening all the time? Why isn't the battery draining massively as its recording all this audio and uploading it via Wifi/Mobile data? Or is it doing on-device language translation? Pretty sure on-device translation is going to chew MORE battery than just uploading the bits for some other platform to process them.

More probably what happened:

"She was recently talking to one of our kids about the Maori language, and said a couple of words in Maori" Or someone else in the household has Googled Maori language, Google/Facebook then associates your Home IP with an interest in the Maori language. Of your 3 examples though, this one is the hardest to come up with a plausible "what really happened"

"Then yesterday she was at work and they discussed a particular product being made available in store - and guess what.... when she got home adverts for that product started appearing as adverts...." -And how did the people discussing it know about it being available in store? They probably saw an ad, because whoever launched it in store started an ad campaign targeting your wife's demographic (employed, female, age between x-y, has kids" - Also highly possible people at your Wife's work did some Facebook/Googling about the product again associating your wife's cellphone's IP (same shared NAT address) with an interest in that product.

"Then last night she was talking to me about some renovations and watched a quick video about some plastering, and now shes getting adverts about home reno etc." Well yea that's how Google works. I've searched for music things recently and now I get heaps of band news in my Google Feed etc. Videos you watch feed heavily into what Google thinks you're interested in.

So yea, it sure as hell SEEMS like our devices are listening to us. But I very very much doubt they are - no one's shown any evidence they do and I'm pretty sure they'd leave some pretty hefty footprints (network traffic / battery usage) that's absent.

concordnz

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#2492568 27-May-2020 10:01

It's a real problem!

I've done a bit of research into this over the last 5 years - to try and prevent it happening.

It is NOT Facebook(I specifically don't have anything Facebook(or related = wont touch whatsApp)on my phone & I don't log into Facebook via browser on my phone)

- It is not Huawei problem (I have a different brand of popular smartphone & it happens to me)

I've turned off all forms of voice recognition & revoked/blocked all mic permissions - & it still happens to me!!!

- It seems Google/Android Core system related - and it won't allow you to block it.

You can't track data stream via something like 'wireshark' - it doesn't seem to stream back to a server 'live' - I suspect it is 'packetizing' the info & sending at certain (or random) times. - or only when phone is idle......

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