(I know many of you already know it but this incident I experienced made me so paranoid about using smartphones)
To start off, I’m not that deep into privacy rabbit hole but I do as much I can possibly to be private on my phone. But for the rest of phones in my family, I generally don’t care because they are not tech savvy and pushing them towards privacy would make their lives hard.
So, the other day I pirated a movie for my family and since it was on Netflix, it was a direct rip with full HD. I was explaining to my family how this looks so good as this is an direct rip off from the Netflix platform, and not a recording of a screening in a cinema hall(camrip). It was a small 2min discussion in my native language with only English words used are record, piracy and Netflix.
Later I walk off and open YouTube, and I see a 2 recommendations pop-up on my homepage, “How to record Netflix shows” & “Why can’t you screen record Netflix”. THE WHAT NOW. I felt insanely insecure as I was sure never in my life I looked this shit up and it was purely based on those words I just spoke 5min back.
I am pretty secure on my device afaik and pretty sure all the listening happened on other devices in my family. Later that day, I went and saw which all apps had microphone access, moved most of them to Ask everytime and disabled Google app which literally has all the permissions enabled.
Overall a scary and saddening experience as this might be happening to almost everyone and made me feel it the journey I took to privacy-focused, all worth it.
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Most likely the website you pirated your movies from stored cookies in your browser which then were picked up by Google/YouTube.
That’s not how that works. There were likely ads on the page which brings in Google cookies and shows the page the user is on.
OP make sure all third party cookies are blocked. They’re not needed anymore.
There is one more thing I haven’t mentioned here. The device where I pirated the movie is different and is on different Google account and my Google account on which I opened the YouTube was different.
You just mentioned 2 different Google accounts: if your devices are connected to Google accounts they are already getting a lot of information from you that way, and Google knows that those 2 accounts are related.
That’s absurd to think they link two different Google accounts and recommend stuff on YouTube. This is less believable than them listening to mic 24/7.
Also the device I pirated content on, has only one Google account registered.
This is very much believable, and a thousand times more believable than your phone listening to you to send you ads.
Doesn’t matter, google is well known for tracking related accounts using a variety of methods - be it location data, connected IP, tracking cookies, device proximity, even things like usage habits, etc.
Can confirm. I have a few accounts for keeping different interests separate in YT. I also keep those accounts in different container tabs, but recommendations tend to leak anyway. Google knows what I’m up to.
- A family member might have searched it
- An ad network might have reported on your piracy (especially now with privacy sandbox)
- Your media player might just be doing some tracking and/or insecure searching for metadata
- Siri or something might have popped open
- You googled to get to the piracy website
- You may have just looked up the movie, and the movie was popular with pirates
Don’t get too paranoid
I’ve gotten ads for things I’ve just thought about. Never said anything out loud about or did any searches related to. It was something in a video I’ve watched dozens of videos about in the past. But on this occasion, I happened to think that I kind of want one for the first time. And I just so happened to start getting ads for them right after, also for the first time. They know way more about you than you think and don’t need to listen to you.
And how often. have you said stuff that you have not received advertising for? You will notice it when you get a positive match but not on a negative.
Data collecting companies can predict/rate your behavior for more then 20 years based. Since then. it has been perfected. They know that you are interested in those topics without having the need to waste resources on recording and analyzing every single audio stream.
Listening to audio would be the least effective and most expensive method of data collection for advertisers. It’s not happening. They already have literally over a million data points on you, there’s nothing useful for them to glean from your audio that they don’t already have ad nauseum.
You see thousands of ads and recommendations every day. You finally found one that was relevant to you. It’s not that deep.
No, they don’t: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4
Again, no, they don’t: https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188
If you don’t trust a 4 minute YouTube video or an independent (?) study, try a Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/comment/hfhynid/
A phone can notice when it’s in the hands of a security expert and start acting normal. Before dieselgate, Volkswagen cars had been emissions tested for years without finding anything suspicious. Turned out VW used the car’s sensors to detect when it was being tested.
correct.
the level of unsubstantiated cope in this thread is mind boggling. from people many of whom should honestly know better.
no, they don’t
Please be careful with your claims.
In my experience, whenever investigating these claims and refutations we usually find when digging past the pop media headlines into the actual academic claims, that noone has proven it’s not happening. If you know of a conclusive study, please link.
Regarding the article you have linked we don’t even need to dig past the article to the actual academic claims.
The very article you linked states quite clearly:
The researchers weren’t comfortable saying for sure that your phone isn’t secretly listening to you in part because there are some scenarios not covered by their study.
(Genuine question, not trying to be snarky) Will you take a moment to reflect on which factors may have contributed to your eagerness to misrepresent the conclusions of the studies cited in your article?
Root your phone and degoogle it if it doesn’t have LineageOS image. If it does have LineageOS image, then flash it. Oh, and don’t use Google and YouTube. Use Brave/Vivaldi for web search and Tubular for YouTube.
I’ve seen a lot of people using Vivaldi as “private” browser. What is the point here?
Because it’s one of the few browsers on Android that allow you to put your address bar down
Firefox?
Firefox is okay but most websites break on it.
I don’t see any main website being broken due to firefox
Most? Are you sure you didn’t install some extensions that break your browsing?
Don’t get things for free! Ever! The producers aren’t rich enough yet to pay the artists a living wage for their creative work. Homeland will extra-judicially use weapon systems on you even if you don’t pirate because all it takes is false accusation and then you will be tortured and never allowed to reproduce anywhere in the US sphere of influence (or TPP or UN).
