
I'm becoming scared of Facebook - lisper
https://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/5k4dn8/im_becoming_scared_of_facebook/?
======
brazzledazzle
I can't believe people legitimately think Facebook is spying on them through
microphones. There's so much that's more likely to be happening I can't fathom
why they just default to assuming that and it only serves to make the
conversation seem crazy to anyone with a hint of rationality.

Here's a more likely scenario that is scary in its own right: I have a private
conversation with John Doe. John Google's it and ends up on a page with the
Facebook tracking pixel. Google knows John and I know each other, knows John
and I were in the same place and knows John googled something not long after
or while we were in the same place. Facebook doesn't know we talked about it
but it can make a guess. Worst case is they show me an ad without much context
like dozens of other ads I ignore every single day.

That kind of profiling is what we should be talking about because it doesn't
take much to figure out who's talking to who about what when you have
information about their every move and page load.

~~~
c0nducktr
I can _definitely_ believe that people think Facebook is spying on them
through their microphone, because it's the most obvious answer. Most people
don't know anything about how tracking works and how Facebook tailor ads to
you, but everyone knows how a microphone works.

I realize that this was posted on the technology subreddit, but that subreddit
reaches an extremely wide audience, most of which certainly doesn't know all
the ins-and-outs of the tracking/advertising business.

~~~
tedunangst
Is it the most obvious answer? 20 years ago, I drank a glass of milk and
watched the X Files, and then there was an advertisement for milk. Is the most
obvious answer that my TV was watching me?

~~~
c0nducktr
Well, maybe 'obvious' is the wrong term, but there's something different
between drinking a glass of milk and seeing a milk ad, and pointing out an
Arcadia in a parking lot and telling your friend you liked the car, and then
just later that night getting an ad for "2017 GMC Arcadia - Low Financing".

The precision is what makes it seem weird, and without an understanding of how
a company would target ads to you, the idea that you're being literally
listened to by the app, seems possible.

~~~
coderdude
Coincidences like that happen all the time. Attributing them to spying is a
ticket to a level of paranoia that some people have a very hard time finding
their way back from. It's healthier to deter them from such lines of thought
when there is an absence of evidence that this is something that actually
occurs.

~~~
c0nducktr
Coincidences happen all the time, but targeted ads like those still differ
from general audience ads. Just because instead of audio it is spying using
metadata and keywords doesn't make seem any less invasive.

> Attributing them to spying is a ticket to a level of paranoia that some
> people have a very hard time finding their way back from.

I'll state again that I don't believe FB is actually listening in on phone
conversations, but to the majority of their users, they may as well be doing
just that. It is all just spying, only using different sources.

~~~
coderdude
I know what you were saying. I just chimed in with my opinion. It's unexpected
to have the reply to your comment not be in opposition to yours. The
expectation is that I wanted to undermine your opinion.

------
foxfired
This is the feature that is where it all started[1]

> If you don’t turn it on, we won’t use your microphone to try and match TV or
> music when you write a status update. If you do choose to turn it on and
> later decide it’s not for you, you can easily turn it off at any time.

> Fact: Nope, no matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does
> not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn’t listening to or storing your
> conversations.

> Here’s how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a
> status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your
> phone. This fingerprint is sent to our servers to try and match it against
> our database of audio and TV fingerprints. By design, we do not store
> fingerprints from your device for any amount of time. And in any event, the
> fingerprints can’t be reversed into the original audio because they don’t
> contain enough information.

The app does fingerprint the audio and send it to their server to match a
movie or audio. But they say they don't save it.

[1]: [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-
sh...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/2014/05/a-new-optional-way-to-share-and-
discover-music-tv-and-movies/)

~~~
foxfired
Quick note, now that I reread what I quoted, I noticed how they say they do
not store sound or recordings. But what if it is converted to text?

Notice below they say that the fingerprint cannot be reversed into the
original audio because it doesn't contain enough information.

Text cannot be converted to the ORIGINAL audio but it can be converted to
audio.

This may be just me being paranoid, but I do know that legalese is designed
exactly to say something without saying everything.

Anyway.

------
rl3
> _Facebook is advertising products to me based on conversations I 've had in
> bars ..._

Is there any evidence that Facebook surreptitiously listens to conversations?
I could see mining the ambient content of any Facebook video/VOIP sessions,
but beyond that I can't see it being true.

Facebook location services can be genuinely creepy though. Earlier this year I
enabled location services on the app (while keeping location history
disabled), and it would suggest anyone in my phone's proximity using Facebook.
It even suggested the attendants at my local gas station, and nurses at my
doctor's office. Neighbors too, but only the ones in the same building
(~75ft). I suspect this was due to my friends list numbering in the single
digits at the time, since I'd otherwise neglected Facebook since its
inception.

Then, I took a brief vacation and added a bunch of new people. The creepy
location telepathy suddenly vanished. Ever since, all it's been suggesting is
acquaintances of said people, despite the fact I live thousands of miles away
with location services enabled 24/7\. So, I guess Facebook can be as dumb as
it is smart sometimes.

The notion of a private investigator (or psychotic stalker) buying a cheap
smartphone, installing FB on it with a clean account, enabling location
services, muting it, attaching an external battery and dumping it in a bush
somewhere unfortunately seems feasible. It strikes me as a good experiment for
a security researcher to conduct.

~~~
matt4077
He must be spending time in awfully boring bars if Facebook can do speech-to-
text on sound captured while his phone is in his pocket.

~~~
k_bx
Voice is pretty good target for being separated from everything else. My "ok
google" recognizes my voice pretty good even if loud music is playing, for
example.

------
avenoir
> Yes. Facebook uses a trick to keep running in the background on your phone.
> At least on iOS, most apps aren't able to run background processes
> constantly. One of the exceptions is apps that play music, so Facebook plays
> a silent audio clip in the background so it can stay running.

Interesting, according to this [1] article, Facebook claimed that running
silent audio on a phone was a bug. That's one heck of an interesting bug.

[1] [https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-
a-b...](https://techcrunch.com/2015/10/22/facebook-says-it-fixed-a-bug-that-
caused-silent-audio-to-vampire-your-iphone-battery/)

~~~
haikuginger
I don't think it's that interesting. My guess is it was a glitch with the
logic that autoplays videos silently while you scroll through the feed.

~~~
alphabettsy
A glitch? I'm pretty sure they use location changes to notify the app just
like Dropbox does for Auto Photo backup, but either way it's no glitch, audio
doesn't even play unless you tap the video unless I'm mistaken.

~~~
haikuginger
Sure. But the audio has to be ready to play from one of any number of videos
immediately that are already playing silently. My guess at architecture is
that Facebook grabs audio device priority ahead of time and starts playing
silent audio so that they can use their own logic to splice in the audio
stream of any tapped video immediately when tapped, rather than first needing
to acquire audio device priority.

Twitter had something similar for a while; if you were listening to music,
then if you scrolled through your timeline and came across an autoplay video
(which would play silently at first), your music would stop. They were
preemptively grabbing exclusive audio mode in anticipation of needing it for
the video, and then playing silence through it until you tapped on the video
itself.

------
cyberferret
Hmmm. As crazy as it sounds, I've been freaked out by this recently too.

I recently had to get glasses due to degraded eyesight. I never posted
anything about it on social media because quite frankly i was embarrassed by
it. Never did any searches etc. Just went to my optometrist, did the test and
got my glasses.

Whenever friends see me working, or out and about (where i usually have my
phone with me), they usually comment "oh, you have glasses now!" Or something
equivalent. I usually respond with a light hearted "oh yeah, i am going blind
these days" or something along those lines.

Well dang - my Facebook feed is full of ads for optometrists and lasik surgery
etc. these days!

Let me reiterate, i have never mentioned my affliction on any social media
channels, nor done a search for anything related to my failing vision. The
coincidence is spooky.

~~~
err4nt
Microphone could be one possiility, what about additional knowledge from GPS
(knowing you're at a location people have checked in on Facebook as being at
the optometrist/glasses store, as well as being in locations where people post
about such things without checking in.

With as many different users doing as many different actions as Facebook can
see, it wouldnt take much to piece it together.

------
467568985476
I'm having a hard time believing anything substantial from the linked thread.
It seems like an obvious example of confirmation bias and frequency illusion.
If anyone has some data or a "smoking gun" so to speak, I'm all ears. As it
stand now though, I don't really care for another iteration of all the people
who don't use facebook gloating about it and intentionally failing to
understand the value it provides for its users.

------
cryptarch
Are there any organizations that try to peddle these concepts to the masses?

Just basic things like "there's no such thing as privacy when you're on the
internet", and "Facebook owns all your private chats and exploits them to
coerce you to click ads and use more Facebook".

~~~
amiga-workbench
This all used to be common sense and was drilled into people when the web was
new, along with "when online, never share your real name or location with
anybody, always use a pseudonym."

Roll on 2016 and people are pouring every personal detail into the web, what
the fuck happened?

~~~
gruez
"social networks" happened

~~~
alphabettsy
Yep. People think they're sharing with their "friends" because you get to
choose by accepting people and don't seem to fully understand they're handing
it over to a megacorp and their data hoarding buddies.

------
Animats
I'm more worried about Amazon Echo, which really is listening all the time.
"The more you use Dot, the more it adapts to your speech patterns, vocabulary,
and personal preferences. And because Echo Dot is always connected, updates
are delivered automatically." "Always getting smarter and adding new
features".

Some toys listen, too. Toys-R-U pulled "My Friend Cayla" from sale due to
complaints from a watchdog organization.[1] "Most devices aren’t recording
continuously, and won’t start recording unless activated. You know, a lot of
the stuff in the future might get a little more fuzzy.”

[1] [http://www.cbsnews.com/news/smart-devices-amazon-echo-
google...](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/smart-devices-amazon-echo-google-home-
my-friend-cayla-security-privacy/)

~~~
edblarney
This is the scariest of all.

 __* Anything you say in your home is the property of Google /Amazon __*

You have sex with your wife? The sounds you make are their property.

Say something politically incorrect? Amazon/FB might not use it against you,
but they might have the data stored and others can.

I really can't believe allow this stuff in their homes.

FB/G etc. are too big to do directly nefarious things like 'use the mic on
your smartphone' without your permission, it would blow up on them ... but to
do it _with_ your permission? It's crazy.

~~~
fencepost
Keep an eye on Ars Technica in the next week or two, and also take a look at
this article: [http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/police-ask-
alexa-...](http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/12/police-ask-alexa-did-
you-witness-a-murder/)

TL;DR: The Echo uploads audio for cloud-based recognition when it detects
voices, but it's not clear if or how long Amazon keeps that. The Echo also has
its internal audio buffer which is used for that detection, and in this case
the police were looking for any audio that might have been retained in that
buffer in the time period before the device was disconnected during the
investigation.

------
rubyfan
So I have noticed FB recommend people that all attended the same party that I
have no previous relationship to.

It was more people than I'd assume would look me up or be able to spell my
name, so quite weird. I didn't assume a mic situation, I assumed the app can
read SSIDs or something similar. I don't allow FB to use location services, so
either they buy my location from Waze and link it back to my FB ID somehow or
the SSID thing. I could see it being technically feasible to sample audio on
multiple devices to see who's in the same location, something like Shazam and
less for actual content analysis.

Nonetheless it is scary. Imagine you were gay in 95% of the countries in the
world. Or Muslim in the US. Or Palestinian in Israel. Or Uyghur in China. Just
being in the same vicinity as others in your community establishes a network
ready to catalog and analyze.

It's more than FB though.

~~~
morgante
> So I have noticed FB recommend people that all attended the same party that
> I have no previous relationship to.

You probably knew some people at the party though, and some of _them_ had
location services on. It's really not hard to guess that you were at a party.

~~~
rubyfan
Interesting, you think there is something at FB to detect an event like that?

It's true we all knew our host but it was one of those _worlds collide_
parties where he had invited friends, neighbors, old friends from high school,
some work friends, etc.

------
sasas
There is a name for this cognitive bias - 'Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon' or
'Frequency illusion'.

"The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come
to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly
afterwards" [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequ...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion)

~~~
vinchuco
There is a name for this cognitive bias - 'Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon' or
'Frequency illusion'.

"The illusion in which a word, a name, or other thing that has recently come
to one's attention suddenly seems to appear with improbable frequency shortly
afterwards" [1]

[1]
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Fre...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases#Frequency_illusion)

~~~
sasas
Please do not plagiarise people's comments.

------
iamben
Click the arrow in the top right corner of the ad and click "why am I seeing
this ad". Usually the targeting explains it pretty well.

------
morgante
I will pay $1,000 to anyone who is able to provide conclusive evidence of
Facebook targeting advertising based on listening to all conversations.

It's an easily testable hypothesis which is blatantly false. If Facebook had
an always-on phone recording, people's data limits would be swiftly used up.
There are tons of alternative explanations.

~~~
Clubber
>If Facebook had an always-on phone recording, people's data limits would be
swiftly used up.

Not if they were converted to text with the phone before they were sent.

~~~
morgante
Even text would involve a vastly higher upload amount than Facebook actually
uses at-rest.

~~~
Clubber
Text is pretty small. It's even a multitude smaller when compressed. It could
easily be added to normal send packets without anyone noticing. Furthermore,
when things are encrypted, it distorts the actual size of the message. I mean
I came up with a way to do it unnoticed in a few minutes, imagine what a top
team could come up with in a few months.

I obviously don't know if it's happening or not (deleted my account years ago)
but it isn't hard.

~~~
morgante
Perhaps, but I've monitored the volume of data uploads by the Facebook app and
they're pretty minimal.

There's also the fact that Facebook has gone on the record specifically
disavowing this conspiracy. If it were true, they wouldn't so unequivocally
deny it. [0] There's far more harm for them deceiving customers than there is
in them admitting to a creepy feature.

Additionally, everyone who has promulgated this conspiracy has been fairly
suspect. None of them make any effort to analyze the alternative reasons.

But, like I said, I have $1,000 for whoever can prove this is happening. It
really shouldn't be hard. If this conspiracy works the way people claim it
does, you should be able to mutter about any random product to your phone and
have Facebook start showing you ads for it.

[0] [http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-
smartphon...](http://www.theverge.com/2016/6/3/11854860/facebook-smartphone-
listening-eavesdrop-microphone-denial)

~~~
Clubber
>If it were true, they wouldn't so unequivocally deny it.

That's a strange conclusion to come to. I think it was Shakespeare addressed
that very thing in Hamlet.

>There's far more harm for them deceiving customers than there is in them
admitting to a creepy feature.

If they've already deceived, then they certainly wouldn't admit it. If they
stopped doing it, they could deny it was currently happening and not be lying.

>I have $1,000 for whoever can prove this is happening.

That number pretty much ensures anyone who has the ability to find out
wouldn't bother.

Personally, I think they might have toyed with it but abandoned it. The trick
isn't collecting the data without getting caught, that's simple (as earlier
described). The trick is taking action on the data and not getting noticed.

If you use the conversation data as a weight to only be added to non-
conversation data, you could do it completely unnoticed. In other words,
gather conversation data but only apply it to data collected in other, less
controversial means. So +1 for posting about Colgate, +1 for talking about it
only if there is already +1 from the posting.

~~~
morgante
> That's a strange conclusion to come to.

Why? I posit that a good portion of the customer fallout from this
functionality has _already_ happened since so many people believe the
conspiracy.

By lying about it, they add a whole layer of difficulty. They'd also open
themselves up to lawsuits: companies can't just record your audio and then lie
about recording it.

> That number pretty much ensures anyone who has the ability to find out
> wouldn't bother.

Why? It shouldn't take any sophisticated technical analysis at all.

Ideally we'd have actual network activity proving it, but I'd settle for
someone talking to their phone about a product which I choose for them (ie.
not something they'd already have on their consciousness) and having ads show
up for it. If this feature works how people claim it does, you should be able
to get ads on demand for anything you talk about.

~~~
Clubber
>Why? I posit that a good portion of the customer fallout from this
functionality has already happened since so many people believe the
conspiracy.

The quote is "The lady doth protest too much, methinks." I'm not sure if you
are familiar with it but it means that when people vehemently protest
something it usually means they did it.

I actually read the link you supplied and I don't think they are _currently_
doing it based on what they said, but they might have done it in the past and
stopped once people started noticing. They could be sending it to a third
party, which would make their denial true. They might not be doing it at all.
Who knows?

>companies can't just record your audio and then lie about recording it.

Depends on what people agreed to in the terms and also what wording they used
to deny it. I mean they denied they gave NSA direct access to their servers,
but NSA had direct access to their servers.

>Why? It shouldn't take any sophisticated technical analysis at all.

It can be easily obfuscated using compression, encryption and when they sent
the data. I touched on this in another post on this thread.

They could gather the data and only apply it as a weight to an already
collected data point that isn't related to the microphone. I posted this
elsewhere also.

Aren't conspiracy theories fun?

~~~
morgante
> The quote is "The lady doth protest too much, methinks."

I'm quite familiar with the quote. Except that in practice, covering up a
negative action is often exactly what lands people into hot water (see
Watergate, Clinton, etc.).

Facebook strenuously denies this conspiracy. [0] There _are_ in fact laws
governing consent for recording.

Of course, it's impossible to prove that Facebook has _never_ listened in on
people's conversations, but it's a very suspect claim to say they are today.

> I mean they denied they gave NSA direct access to their servers, but NSA had
> direct access to their servers.

They were legally obligated to deny that, so the exact opposite of the
situation today (you're legally obligated to disclose if you're recording
someone).

> They could gather the data and only apply it as a weight to an already
> collected data point that isn't related to the microphone.

Perhaps, but that's an entirely different claim than what the conspiracy
theorists are claiming.

[0] [http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-
pho...](http://newsroom.fb.com/news/h/facebook-does-not-use-your-phones-
microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories/)

~~~
Clubber
>covering up a negative action is often exactly what lands people into hot
water (see Watergate, Clinton, etc.).

You are mixing up testifying under oath versus a PR release. Companies lie to
you all day long in PR releases. If FB were to go under oath and state that,
it would be more believable, but not completely, see James Clapper.

I'm just pointing out how it's technically and orginizationally feasible to do
this undetected. The only thing stopping FB from doing this is ethics and
possibly backlash.

------
ZanyProgrammer
Why don't people just use the mobile site in their browser? The passwords
should be saved in your phone's keychain, and phone screen sizes are plenty
big enough to use efficiently these days.

------
Sir_Cmpwn
Lots of people here saying Facebook probably isn't spying on your
conversations are missing the point. I suspect many people finding excuses to
exonerate a service they're addicted to. The fact of the matter is that you
_should_ be scared of Facebook, because Facebook is fucking scary.

Facebook is a horrifying company. It's the largest and most personal and
invasive tracking engine on the net, more so even than Google. They know
_everything_ about you. Facebook is tracking and making available to
advertisers everything from your employer to your political affiliations to
your ethnicity to your charitable donations to your credit [1]. Facebook is
(illegally) now combining your WhatsApp information with your Facebook profile
[2]. Facebook once collected the unsubmitted status updates you typed and
decided against submitting [3]. They track when you are asleep [4]. You
already know that Facebook has trained a neural network to identify your face.
Facebook engages in censorship on a regular and systematic basis, against
journalists and political activists, and regular users too. Even when they
aren't censoring explicitly they're building a filter bubble around you that
is polarizing our population to extremes.

What happens when they get hacked, badly? Even big companies get hacked and
have their databases dumped. Are you really comfortable with everything they
know about you being made public? What happens if government actors get access
to this data? What makes you think they don't already have it? I saw a stiff
give a talk at HOPE who mentioned that they have an FBI agent staffed full-
time at Facebook HQ.

You _should_ be scared of Facebook.
[https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674)

[1] [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/08...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
intersect/wp/2016/08/19/98-personal-data-points-that-facebook-uses-to-target-
ads-to-you/)

[2]
[https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-...](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/aug/25/whatsapp-
backlash-facebook-data-privacy-users)

[3] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/facebook-collects-
co...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/facebook-collects-conducts-
research-on-status-updates-you-never-post/)

[4] [http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/facebook-collects-
co...](http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/12/facebook-collects-conducts-
research-on-status-updates-you-never-post/)

------
owly
Delete FB. At least mobile. Your brain will thank you.

------
supernintendo
I deleted my Facebook account years ago. Don't miss it one bit.

~~~
askafriend
I swear this exact text shows up in every conversation about Facebook wether
it's related to the story at hand or not. It's almost like a meme at this
point. Look we get it OP, but stating that by itself doesn't drive the
conversation forward in a meaningful way.

~~~
quirkafleeg
Is it even possible to delete a FB account? I know someone who deletes their
FB all the time. Every time they log in there it is again.

Unless, if you don't log in after X months/centuries it's completely removed,
but I don't see why FB would do that. Apparently, according to what I've read
here, even people without FB accounts have FB accounts (shadow profiles).

~~~
SallySwanSmith
They're deactivating their account:

[https://www.facebook.com/help/214376678584711](https://www.facebook.com/help/214376678584711)

this is vastly differently then deleting the account:

[https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674](https://www.facebook.com/help/224562897555674)

The delete can take up to 90 days to remove all traces, but it is gone and
will not allow logins when the process starts.

------
thebiglebrewski
This literally just happened to me. I was having a conversation with my
girlfriend and then opened facebook and saw a status about the exact thing we
were talking about.

Is it possible to know if this is happening on an android phone? I'd love to
eliminate the possibility it is happening...

~~~
Falling3
Just a status? Any reason to think it was anything other than a coincidence?

~~~
thebiglebrewski
It was really, really uncannily related to what we'd been talking about and a
friend that I don't see updates from that often.

~~~
SallySwanSmith
Do you think your Friend was coerced into making the status update? Or do you
think the status update was faked by facebook?

