is it just me? Who is listening.

[Bijan]

5 minutes ago, BrightonCorgi said:

Bingo.  This stuff is embedded to the lowest levels on the phones.  Can be running on reserved memory addresses etc...  Phones are not secure.

That's the sort of threat you have to worry about at the state actor level.

A phone without any Google play store and without Google play services, and without any of those apps, is going to be pretty secure.

Beyond that you can get custom phones that bypass the phone OS (Android/iOS) entirely and run Linux.

At that point there's no difference between the phone and a computer. And I can't see how you can send email or post on FOH without even a computer connected to the internet.

[rolaand]

I mean you are worried about govts burning 0days on joe consumer’s privacy? I have talked to people working at Google’s ad division etc and there is far more information you are transmitting through your clicks than through your microphone.

No one needs on phone taps when you have hidden pixels and data aggregation and correlation that you can purchase cheaply.

They have such large feature sets on your actions via web traffic and pattern analysis that having access to a microphone may even be lower fidelity insights into user preferences and behaviors.

This sort of microphone argument comes up every now and again and the answer is always that your patterns of viewing and interactions can give fine grained insight into your preferences which are correlated across millions of other users to understand how you may think. So you don’t actually need to search for item x in order to be served ads for that. You simply need to be associated with people that have established that pattern and their data scientists can infer that you have a high likelihood of purchasing that as well.

[El Presidente]

5 hours ago, ha_banos said:

I've been testing this for a few years now. I've been trying to coax the spies to send me advertising about SPACE HOPPERS for ages! Never have!

I'd love to buy a space hopper again. I remember fondly from my days of youth. I WOULD BUY LOADS OF SPACE HOPPERS. FOR EVERYONE.

Yet .. nothing ..

 

Pure bastardry   

......there is a little factory in the  outskirts of  schenzhen that has been trying to work out what a SPACE HOPPER is. 

The minute they figure it out.......it will turn up on your phone. 

[Chibearsv]

9 hours ago, Fuzz said:

No need to go to all that effort. Just buy on of these...

I demand the Cone of Silence!