233
I still don’t think companies serve you ads based on spying through your microphone
(simonwillison.net)
this post was submitted on 02 Jan 2025
233 points (84.0% liked)
Technology
60316 readers
4542 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
On Android, I have the mic, location, and camera blocked via the pulldown tiles menu. I turn them on when needed. The OS and some apps like to bitch about this sometimes but it seems to be working ok.
My iphone does not offer these blanket blocking options. It's a work phone, so I just leave it off unless I need it.
So one of the devices allegedly grabbing keywords from heard conversations, you'd trust with a software based toggle?
I'd only trust hardware toggle.
At this point, it's the best I can do. I have tape on the selfie camera too. I guess I could bust this pixel 7a open and add physical switches to the cameras and mike, but I'm not real confident in my ability to pull that off. Maybe you can tell me how to do that.
I guess a software based toggle is ok for downloaded third party apps on the phone. Just not anything by Google.
And no I am only saying what I trust. I sadly have no toggle. Making an actual hardware toggle outside of the factory line is pretty hard. But disabling them on your device is pretty easy. You can easily make your USB port power only, unplug your camera and destroy the mic.
If you use Graphene on the Pixel however, I think you'd be safe from anything Google to be honest.
You really trust that the button does what it says it does though??!??
You mean a hardware toggle? Because those can be double checked with some electronic knowledge.
And a software toggle can be checked with some software knowledge if the source is available.
Although chances of code being available are quite low for most mobile devices, not to mention software takes many many hours longer and you'll have to make sure your build matches the code (which means manually checking the code of every update).
Question for you: Do you manually check every hardware toggle for correctness?
Weird question. A better question would be how hard it is to check. It's pretty easy. It only requires a multimeter and basic knowledge of electronics. Opening a phone isn't hard either. You can easily use a clothes iron with a rag in front of it.
Never mind, I guess? I ask the questions I'd like answers to. You seem to answer questions you'd like to be asked instead of the ones asked. Weird behavior.
I ask because the ease of which something can be done is worthless if nobody does it.
How would a lack of people using hardware toggles even make it worthless? I don't need that answered. It doesn't.
I am guessing you use a software toggle and are trying to defend your use of it. Which shouldn't be directed towards me. You trust it? That's great. I'm glad for you. I explicitly said I only trust hardware toggles and explained why I wouldn't easily trust a software one. What I do is of no concern to you.
So next time just share your opinion instead of asking a question you don't need answered. Which I obviously noticed. Don't beat around the bush and just cut to the chase.
You misunderstood/I wasn't clear. I was referring to the ease of which you can verify that the hardware does what it is supposed to do. If you can verify it easily, but don't, the ease has no meaning.
So... Do you verify all/most of your hardware toggles? Personally?
And no, I don't use software toggles. I don't use any toggles on my phone, except Bluetooth to save battery. 🤷♂️ You guessed wrong. Maybe don't be so smug about trying to "read" someone. It ends up being super cringe when it's wrong. 🫣
I don't think you understand how electronics work. Maybe if you have an ugly plastic see trough toggle, but I don't see that happening any time soon.
I also don't understand why you are asking me questions because you've failed to explain something, as in some ploy to make me the bad guy here.
:') You're a joke.
I explicitly used the word 'guess' to not be smug. As in, the following part is merely a guess. But hey, you can keep making it personal, but it just shows who is "cringe" here.
Now get blocked.
😂 what a tool
Exactly the type of response I was expecting lol.
Yes boy, please block me. Please do.