Facebook may listen to your conversations
Facebook is in the news again, this time for listening in on conversations or background noise.
The store on the News10 website is sensationalist but its core is true. The news report makes it seem as if Facebook is listening in on conversations all the time.
The report admits that users need to give Facebook permission to access the microphone, but makes it seem as if Facebook will from that moment on listen to anything that is being said.
This, according to Facebook, is not the case.
What is true though is that Facebook, under certain circumstances, will use the microphone on mobile devices to understand what is being said or played in the background.
Here are the caveats: the feature is only available in the US currently, it is not on by default, and Facebook will only use the microphone to listen in during status updates.
This Facebook help page highlights what is happening:
Does Facebook record conversations when it identifies the things I'm listening to or watching?
No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update.
You can verify if song and TV identification is turned on or off in the following way:
- Open the Facebook application on your device.
- Tap Status on the news feed, or tap Write Post on the timeline.
- Tap the smiley icon.
- Tap on the volume icon there to turn song and TV identification on or off.
Mobile phone users may get a prompt to allow Facebook to use the microphone when the feature is turned on for the first time.
You may turn off microphone access, record audio access, or any other permission that refers to access to the device's microphone, in the privacy or security settings on the device.
So how can you protect yourself from that?
If you don't want Facebook to use the feature, make sure the app has no permission to use the microphone on the device.
Another option that you have is to not use the Facebook application at all -- which is also beneficial to the device's battery life -- but to use the mobile site of Facebook instead using a web browser.
While it may not be as comfortable as the app under certain circumstances, it does away with many of the privacy implications that the Facebook application brings along with it.
Now You: do you use the Facebook app?
Not using any social networks, my life is private, ads are also banned, sorry. I have no idea who actually watches those ads, probably buy all the things masochists…
Next step: ads to non-users via cookies linked to like-buttons:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-wants-to-help-sell-every-ad-on-the-web-1464321603
quote from Wall Street Journal 27.05.2016:
“Facebook thinks it can use the technology and tactic more effectively than other online advertising companies, thanks largely to the enormous amount of data it has on its own users. That can help it spot patterns in people’s behaviors and better infer what a non-Facebook user might be interested in based on a relatively small amount of information, Mr. Bosworth said. Online advertisers sometimes refer to this tactic as “lookalike†targeting.”
Thanks for the link to wsj’s article. Facebook states its project without the slightest scruple. Business is business.
Confirms here what I knew of Facebook and, when I hesitate to join the sheep valley I recall such facts and find myself more determined than ever to remain what a Facebook fan above defined as a butterfly.
I read on wsj’s article, “Facebook disclosed in March that about 1.65 billion people now use the site each month. According to the International Telecommunication Union, a total of 3.17 billion people used the Internet globally in 2015.” which means I was wrong when I wrote above that a majority of Web users had no Facebook account : looks like the gangrene is spreading, most unfortunately; that is, if the provided results are correct, of course.
Someone still uses Facebook? That’s so 2007.
Facebook also have tracking APIs implemented in tons of apps and games. There is no ad blocker for native running code on your mobiles.
When something online is free then we’re the product – but then who ever thought otherwise? The problem isn’t Facebook or any of the so-called ‘social media’. IMHO they’re actually very UNsocial media, and the problem isn’t privacy, it’s the pathetic mass addiction to these services that overrules peoples’ better judgement.
Including mine, I freely confess.
I hate Facebook, and I certainly don’t trust it. But I have an account. Why? Because it’s one of just a few ways (including Skype, which I also use but don’t trust) I can keep in touch with my grandchildren who live a long way away.
I maintain no contacts on either Facebook or Skype other than the absolute minimum to do that job. I’ve had friends – even family – fall out with me because I’ve refused to add them. If they can’t/won’t understand why then tough – on them not me.
As for Twitter – I don’t use it because I’ve yet to even minimally understand what the hell it’s actually for.
Don’t people have REAL friends any more? You know – friends that you phone, visit, have lunch/dinner/drinks with? I know people who have hundreds of online ‘friends.’ I think they’re both sad and delusional.
Using Facebook to keep in touch with friends/relatives living far away is indeed a valid reason IMO compared th the mass hysteria of the arena when it comes to exchanges which so often appear as a circus of hatred, sectarianism, racism and the general confusion tied to these absurdities.
If I ware tempted by Facebook it could be for getting in touch with friends of the past known in foreign countries and with whom I’ve lost contact ever since.
Also, and I’ll try to write this in correct English though even in native French I lack the terminology, the ability to contact associations, companies that have set their Public Relations interface on a social site, mainly Facebook. How often do I not hear “Give your opinion on our page on Facebook” etc… This “rendez-vous”, meeting-spot bothers me quite often.
Concerning general society debates if I were one day to join Facebook I’d avoid them as hell but to do so, that is to set a Facebook account correctly, requires as i’ve been told soooo many parameters that at this time this odyssey appears to me as a kill-feature.
About REAL friends as you mention it with such pertinence, I think many of us still do have those real friends and true pals in REAL life but I also believe that social sites are at the best not an incentive to breath true air, true perfumes, to see true faces and hear true voices and, at the worst, an incentive to forget those realities. I also believe that many social sites’ users are not all dependent, that many consider the tool as only a tool. Finally, remain more users of the Web without a Facebook account than with one…
Twitter is another fact which meets less contrariety here. Should I start investing myself in the social web it’s with twitter that I’d start with, definitely. One day, maybe.
FB carelessness is in the EULA or terms where the user gives all the photos and info down into Bikkenberg’s wallet.
Low IQ Butterflies -vs- high IQ Elephants. Anna logs into facebook. She enthusiastically asks herself… What is Bikkenberg – that genius – offering me? Bob, au contraire, does NOT use Facebook. He hates social sites and social features (LIKE ME, TWIT ME, REPOST ME). Bob sadly asks himself: what will they do to steal my privacy now? Either Anna and Bob are free to choose their presence online.
Low IQ comment :)
I’m another delicate butterfly. Facebook sounds like it could be a potentially useful business-marketing and political-organizing tool, and maybe even a handy way to keep in touch with friends, but their long history of — let’s say “carelessness” to give them the benefit of the doubt — with respect to user control over privacy has made me recoil in horror.
“If you choose to turn on this feature, we’ll only use your microphone to identify the things you’re listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we’re able to identify”
This alone is an Orwellian nightmare.
I’m a butterfly. Wow. I’m a butterfly. :)
.Sequence poetry – start
Com’on butterflies, let’s have a party among the pretty flowers before big fat grasshopper comes in.
Wolves don’t eat butterflies.
Sequence poetry – end.
@george
that is a foregone conclusion.
I would not be surprised in the slightest if an involvement between Facebook and US intelligence agencies were to be revealed.
I think the question nowadays is more to wonder what is not involved (willingly or not) with intelligence agencies than what is. Even the so-called “Dark Web” is said to be infiltrated by hyper-skilled investigators so after that …
Status signal from Russia without love: no, njet – not using the Facejunk app. Not using Facejunk at all. Rather talk to people in person than creating an illusion about myself. Doesn’t help to have huge shoulder pads in jacket which make me look like big muscle man. After all I will have to take jacket off some time and then look like famished rooster. Not good. People would make fun of me. So no Facejunk and eavesdropping on me from this Zucker-guy app thing.
I’m a 46 years old Software developer and I’m still trying to understand what is really interesting in facebook – I found Absolutely nothing , so boring , unnecessary for Low IQ ‘s (Sorry for saying that) I tried to use it but not for me
“Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I’m not sure about the universe.” – Albert Einstein
Right there with you. I’ve tried (at my family’s behest) a couple of times to get into it.
Here’s what my ‘feed’ boiled down to on a daily basis: 90% of it was females posting pictures of their food, what their kids did in the car that was ‘so cute’, bible verses and other ‘inspirational’ rubbish that gets forwarded over and over, ‘selfie’ pics, and the like.
Most of social media strikes me as narcissistic self-promotion.
Repeated verbal tests have yet to turn up anything suspicious. My feed remains clogged with the usual ads. Maybe Facebook heard me talking about the test? Conversely, should I be offended that Facebook isn t listening to me?
Samsung s smart TVs came under scrutiny in early 2015 when their terms of service stated that if your spoken words include personal or other sensitive information, that information will be among the data captured and transmitted to a third party through your use of Voice Recognition. The company was quick to clarify that its voice recognition feature was only activated when asked, and only listened for commands and searches.
Installing a first-party Facebook app is asking to be taken advantage of. Anyone using a Facebook app that isn’t from a third party is an idiot.
SmartTV’s doing this since years. The thing is you simply can disable it, I know it’s strange that this is enabled by default. But it’s not worth to mention it. It would be interesting if it activates it itself in the background or if you not can take control over it.
Today from what I can see you always get options, otherwise people would instantly crying for such privacy no-go (which is good).
What is Facebook ?
The grasshopper.
No, I do not use the Facebook app, in fact I don’t have a Facebook account, and since I’m aware that Facebook tracks even those who are not logged in their account, and even those who have no Facebook account provided a site includes one of their damn scripts, I block this Facepaper thing from A to Z and have no intention of changing anything to that.
No Facebook, no Whatsapp, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Google+.. :-)
So what? You are a special butterfly. Millions aren’t.
no facebook on my behalf either. still, I’m really concearned about my sister, partner and friends. no sheep at all, but too busy in everyday life to keep track of all these growing disadvantages.
@Leo: Just like Tom Hawack, I chose to have no Facebook account and to use browser filters that eliminate their tracking scripts and buttons.
Interesting to hear this makes me a butterfly! So then, what are those millions who allow themselves to be locked inside the Facebook corral? Sheep, I guess.
Being a butterfly, at least I will now happily flit away right over the fence, to a faraway sunset that smells of actual live flowers. Meanwhile, my best wishes to all the sheep. I hope you will enjoy the shepherd’s shearing knife.
Well, fashion is done by those who don’t follow it and, according to Gandhi, truth doesn’t rely on the number of votes. Let’s not forget Churchill’s democracy as the worst regime besides all others.
It can also happen of course that the majority holds the truth. I may very well be totally wrong in my refusal to participate to the Social Circus. I guess there’s always a risk with alternatives. I’ll assume my choice but remain open-minded I hope sufficiently to one day enter Facebook like Caesar his victories in progress : Veni Vidi Vici. Forget the Vici! I’m no conqueror!
…”may” typed Herr Brinkmann in the Title. I’d like to interject and point at ALPHABETH (GOOG on Jow Jones): Google is a corporation based on ADS, by harvesting links google started offering an advertisement platform. Same with Facebook: the free services are used solely for harvesting info on your habits. How many people knows that there are ‘promoted’ links on google? How many people browses the net while looged @ facebook? Google, Facebook are just services that grab cookies, browsing habits, info on your paycheck, your job, your interests, your health and more. Ach So.
Jawohl mein Herr :)
Facebook ain’t GOOG but true that they both, together with other leaders of the band, participate to the crusade “A better Web for bigger money”. The problem starts not with money itself considering “your love won’t pay my bill” according to the Beatles but when money crafts the policy in such a way that what is designed for the user is only the consequence and not the aim and, accordingly, the price announced as free ends up in fortunes far ahead of the granted services. To resume, it’s not — when it could be — a fair deal.
Thanks anyway for reminding that an banana is not an orange (removed apple because of ambiguity).
I’m wondering if Facebook eavesdropping Whatsapp too..