Why your phone is listening in on you (how to stop it)
You may have suspected all along that your phone is listening to you, and yeah, you are right. Unfortunately, you may feel helpless against the tech big bros.
If you wanted more confirmation that your cell is eavesdropping, here it is. Well, NordVPN claims that they did a study and found that majority of Americans knew it but they have no idea how to stop it.
According to NordVPN, a cybersecurity company, such tracking occurs across different devices you use in the home. That is why you may see an ad on your TV and the same or similar ad on your cell phone.
How does this happen?
How your phone is listening to you in the first place
First, note that your phone is not reading your mind. Heck, no!
But marketers are using ‘ultrasonic cross-device tracking’ in the various apps on your phone to literally catch the voices in your background.
According to the Adrianus Warmenhoven, a cybersecurity advisor at NordVPN who wrote an article about it on Site Pro News, apps that ask for microphone permissions even when they don’t need it to offer you their service have only one intention – to listen in on your conversations, background noise from your TV, etc.
This way, the apps will know what you are watching or talking about. They then share this information across the web and within seconds you will be seeing personalized ads on your phone.
“Information showing people’s behaviour across devices is extremely valuable to companies, but this type of tracking is controversial because of its lack of transparency and security concerns around consumers’ data,” NordVPN notes.
It gets even worse when you have a smart tv because ultrasonic audio beacons get embedded in almost everything that streams on the internet, be it websites, TV shows, apps, online videos, — and yeah, social media sites.
How do you stop cellular phone eavesdropping?
According to NordVPN, it is difficult to stop ultrasonic beacons from working. Sounds spooky, right?
“While it’s impossible to stop the ultrasonic beacons working, you can reduce the chance of your smartphone listening for them by simply restricting unnecessary permissions you have granted to the apps on your device,” advises Warmenhoven.
That’s why more than half of Americans (53%) have seen an ad for a product or service pop up on their phones soon after seeing the same on TV or some other platform.
Do the following to reduce this phenomenon where the phone is listening on you:
- Change app permissions – revoke access to the microphone by apps that do not need it to perform their functions.
- Use a browser with trusted privacy policies – For one, Google Chrome or Bing incognito browsing doesn’t guarantee privacy. They all say your activities may not be hidden from some people such as your network providers. Instead, try DuckDuckGo or TOR which neither track nor store your browsing histories.
- Use a VPN – A virtual private network (VPN) is of course the most trusted way to keep yourself unseen and untracked. VPNs encrypts your footprints online and masks your IP.
- Stop using the internet (hic!)
As Apple continues updating its privacy policies, every app now has to ask your permission to track you or your iPhone across third party websites or apps.
You can revoke such permissions across all apps in the privacy settings of your phone, or per app on the settings of the app itself. Before then, let the marketers have their day but in the age of AI, it appears we may not be able to completely block phones from listening to us.