Comment by anenefan

Comment by anenefan 14 hours ago

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My younger bro is convinced phones are eavesdropping on conversations and got particularly paranoid (I thought) a year or so back in regard to talking in earshot of his phone.

His evidence is empirical - Apparently he gets pretty high with friends and shit talks - but when when the search started to suggest some pretty way out things along the same lines, he landed that their conversations weren't private any more.

So I have an understanding of how much tracking is going on so I pressed him on that. But he assured me it was stuff he would not even bother to look up in a clearer mindset and of course smoking recreationally for a very long time knows not to go near some tools that could land himself trouble or awkward explanations. That's probably true he says a lot of stuff that a half decent search would put him straight. In the end I just figured loose permissions of one of the many apps he's installed and that's how they (the app) make their money, selling illegally obtained data to more legal sources.

Permissions are the problem with android phones - there needs to be a specific install route for users, one that the app starts asking for things it should not need have access to, the installer refuses to install and suggests the user look for something better. Camera apps for example really don't need access to communication channels, if it's updates it's need, it can ask - one time access.

steve_adams_86 14 hours ago

Something I discovered when going down this rabbit hole is that if you had that conversation in your house and your visitors have access to your wifi, it may be that they performed the search without you knowing, and your ISP connected that data to you and sold it (as they do).

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  • anenefan 42 minutes ago

    His phone would have to be running a hotspot for any visitors (in many parts of the rural area in my locale, mobile data is it for the internet) but if any visitors were with the same carrier network, visitors could have searched. However it's entirely improbable any of his buddies would be on their phone while they're there unless it was a legit interest. Secondly this is stuff from what I gathered, some of is stuff that no one would really even think exists - it's shit talk speculation that's out past the black stump - no one once they're back to earth is ever going to bother to look up even a small aspect of it.

    In his case a realistic answer falls towards loose or sneaky permissions in regard of an app that have slipped through that have allowed a weird conversation to influence suggestions in internet activity later on.

    However for more grounded subject matters, the more probable strange coincidences falls to queries and visits to the net being scraped by external API and content (fonts scripts etc) providers. I've no idea how much meaningful info would normally be shared between the site and third party providers that seemingly need to be contacted while a site loads.

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  • simonw 13 hours ago

    How would your ISP connect that data if every search engine uses HTTPS now, so there's no way for the ISP to see what you were searching for?

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    • IggleSniggle 12 hours ago

      DNS lookups are still frequently in the clear, and even if they're not, that just means you're trusting some DNS-over-HTTPS provider. The incentives are perverse.

      And of course whoever you are performing your search with, like, oh, an ad company like Google, Meta, or Facebook? They just might use that search data for something.

      Reply View 1 reply
      • simonw 12 hours ago

        Exactly. Google or Meta can correlate behavioral data like this. Your ISP cannot do that by intercepting your searches.

        I care about accuracy when it comes to privacy conversations. I don't want people wasting their time on theories that aren't true when they should be focusing on the real issues at stake.

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    • briankelly 13 hours ago

      Yeah, it's Google and Facebook - not the ISP.

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  • brody_hamer 13 hours ago

    Location location location.

    - User 1 shows an interest in <topic>.

    - User 1 visits the same location, for the same period of time, as user 2.

    - So I show an ad for <topic> to user 2.

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  • nickpsecurity 13 hours ago

    That's true. I had to rule that out by only counting instances when my friends and I were alone. If not, or Wifi is open, then who knows.

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marcusb 14 hours ago

> Apparently he gets pretty high with friends and shit talks - but when when the search started to suggest some pretty way out things along the same lines, he landed that their conversations weren't private any more.

I had an experience like this several years ago. I was having dinner with a customer, and one of the guys brought up this story about how he went to school with someone who got caught cheating on Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Later, back at my hotel, I pulled up YouTube and the first recommended video was of the guy who got caught cheating on the game show. I had not searched for this during the conversation (or prior) nor do I watch game show videos on YouTube, or cheating scandal videos on YouTube.

Here's what I think happened: somebody at the dinner googled it, and the video got recommended based either on geo-location data (we were in close proximity) or because the person who googled it was in my phone contacts, or maybe both. But, I don't think Google/Youtube was recording anyone's conversation to make that recommendation.

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  • wzdd 10 hours ago

    It could also be that YouTube started recommending this video to people for whatever reason, which was why it was on this guy’s mind.

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    • marcusb 5 hours ago

      Anything is possible, but he didn't start the conversation about cheating. Someone else brought up something to the effect of they thought game shows were fake, then he told his story and a third person the table searched for and showed the video.

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JadeNB 14 hours ago

> Permissions are the problem with android phones - there needs to be a specific install route for users, one that the app starts asking for things it should not need have access to, the installer refuses to install and suggests the user look for something better. Camera apps for example really don't need access to communication channels, if it's updates it's need, it can ask - one time access.

I definitely don't want my phone making those decisions for me; I want my phone enabling me to make decisions. The app asks for permissions, I say no, and, rather than ratting me out to the app, my phone does its best to pretend to the app that it (the app) has the permission it wants, say by giving an empty contact book or whatever. (I know rooted phones can do this, but it shouldn't have to be something I have to fight my phone for.)

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edgyquant 14 hours ago

He’s right and everyone knows it. It's pretty blatant and there have been lawsuits settle rather than go to a trial that would surely reveal the extent to which this thing that’s obviously happening is happening

https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/apple-siri-priva...

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  • simonw 13 hours ago

    I attempted to debunk that one here (an admittedly impossible task but I can't help myself trying): https://simonwillison.net/2025/Jan/2/they-spy-on-you-but-not...

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    • alganet 11 hours ago

      It is irrelevant. The suggestion that spying is for advertisement makes no difference.

      That idea only exists to create fake two-dimensional anti-capilist rethoric, which is a rethoric easier to put down than the fact that privacy does not exist anymore.

      So, I am supposed to do this. To "correct you" and look very lunatic.

      It serves, however, a very specific goal. First, it cannot be copied en masse. If this behavior is copied (even as a meme), it implies doom to the more easier to defeat anti-capitalist rethoric and the birth of a true 3D anti-capitalist rethoric. It can only be mocked (smoking guy pointing to a conspiracy board), but that mockery is getting real serious real fast now.

      Can I dive deeper into the mechanics of how this is gonna go?

      We had so many chances, of doing good. You all had so many chances.

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