By Michaela Gordoni
If you have a smartphone, there’s a good chance that your phone is listening in when you may not want it to.
If you have a voice assistant, then your phone is listening for wake words, like “Siri” or “Alexa,” 24/7, Tom’s Guide said.
Sometimes the system mistakes regular conversation for a wake word and accidentally records and uploads audio.
Apps may also listen when you’ve granted them microphone permissions, like for video call and voice apps.
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If you have apps request microphone access without clear justification, that could raise a red flag.
Social media companies deny listening to users’ conversations.
Meta said, “We understand that sometimes ads can be so specific, it seems like we must be listening to your conversations through your microphone, but we’re not. We only use your microphone if you’ve given us permission and are actively using a feature that requires the microphone.”
However, Dr. Peter Hannay — the senior security consultant for cybersecurity firm Asterisk — said, “From time to time, snippets of audio do go back to [other apps like Facebook’s] servers but there’s no official understanding what the triggers for that are.”
“Whether it’s timing or location-based or usage of certain functions, [apps] are certainly pulling those microphone permissions and using those periodically. All the internals of the applications send this data in encrypted form, so it’s very difficult to define the exact trigger,” he added.
If you want to test if your phone is listening to your conversations, you can have your phone near you while naming something specific you’ve never searched for online. For example, metallic purple rugs or a wooden toy drum set.
Over the next few days, mention your topic around your phone multiple times. Don’t type or search anything related to it online.
If you start seeing ads on your phone for these things, then you’ll know it’s been listening to you. Take note of where those ads appear. If this happens, you can check which apps have microphone access, disable voice assistants and adjust your privacy settings.
Many iPhones and Android phones show an indicator when your microphone is active. This appears as a small orange or green dot in the status bar. If you see this when you aren’t using your mic, try to figure out which app is accessing it.
It will also boost your security if you turn off ad personalization in your Google or Apple settings.
Read Next: How Google’s New Tracking System Could Invade Your Privacy
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