
Facebook listening to conservations? - iamjdg
Today in our office my colleague was telling me how his dream would be to work in the maritime industry designing boats (he is a mechanical engineer). I have never searched for maritime related technology and have no interest in it. Tonight I have this suggested post from Facebook: http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.bluewaterrigging.com&#x2F;team&#x2F;andrew-macdonald&#x2F;
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dotmanish
There's another possibility:

Your friend searched for it or read articles about it @ office. You two share
the same geolocation and IP address @ office. Facebook figured out you _might_
be interested in the same topics as what others in your office are searching
for. Facebook shows you potentially related articles @ home.

No audio listening required.

I'd be surprised if Facebook Product Managers haven't been doing the above.
This is basic.

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Spooky23
I don't know why in these threads people always go to great lengths to
discount the possibility of this happening.

Facebook A/B tests all sorts of stuff, all of the time. I had 2 or 3 incidents
like this happen until a year ago when I eliminated use of their app for good.

When Facebook addressed this question last year, the answer was: "[Facebook]
does not use your phone’s microphone to inform ads or to change what you see
in News Feed". That's not a denial.

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brudgers
Well there's this:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14459417](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14459417)

But that's legally plausible as just monitoring phone orientation to improve
user experience.

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singold
How possible it is to reverse the app looking for syscalls to the microphone
api or something?

You should probably discard user initiated audio recording if available but
looks doable for someone with the knowledge.

Disclaimer: I know almost nothing about reversing

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dialupmodem
I would pay good money for a study on this.

Ex: Choose a hundred random subjects and assign them irrelevant, obscure
keywords to speak loudly into their phones while the messenger app is open.
Report back with resulting ads displayed over the following week.

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gtirloni
There have been numerous threads about this:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook%20listening](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=facebook%20listening)

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roshan_arhsim
Yes they are listening!!! there are enough discussion about it in the
/r/technology and even here at HN

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zhte415
conservations?

conversations?

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owebmaster
conservatives?

