There's also a totally plausible and far more insidious answer to what's going on with the experiences people have of the ads matching their conversations.

That explanation is advertising works. And worse, it works subconsciously. That you're seeing the ads and don't even notice you're seeing them and then they're worming their way into your conversations at which point you become more aware of them and then start noticing the ads.

Which does comport with the billions of dollars spent on advertising every year. It would be very weird if an entire ad industry that's at least a century old was all a complete nonsense waste of money this whole time.

To me, this whole narrative is just another parable about why we need to do everything possible to limit our own exposure to ads to avoid being manipulated.

That is glossing over how they process the data and transmit it to the cloud. The assistant wake word for "Hey Google" invokes an audio stream to an off site audio processor in order to handle the query. So that is easy to identify via traffic because it is immediate and large.

The advertising-wake words do not get processed that way. They are limited in scope and are handled by the low power hardware audio processor used for listening for the assistant wake word. The wake word processor is an FPGA or ASIC - specifically because it allows the integration of customizable words to listen for in an extremely low power raw form. When an advertising wake word is identified, it sends an interrupt to the CPU along with an enumerated value of which word was heard. The OS then stores that value and transmits a batch of them to a server at a later time. An entire day's worth of advertising wake word data may be less than 1 kb in size and it is sent along with other information.

Good luck finding that on wireshark.

My own theory is that they tokenize key words and phrases with an AI so that they're not sending the actual audio data. Then it's stored in a form some AI can parse but isn't technically user data so they can skirt legislation around that.

A tokenized collection of key phrases omitting delimiters in text format is going be much, much less than audio, or a transcript.

Smartphones by definition are Spyware, at least if you use the OS as is, because in them all aspects are controlled and logged, either by Google on Android or by Apple on iOS. Adding the default apps that cannot be uninstalled on a mobile that is not rooted. As COX alleges, they also use third-party logs and therefore can track and profile the user very well, even without using this technology that they claim to have.

Although they feel authorized by the user's consent to the TOS and PP, the legality depends directly on the legislation of each country. TOS and PP itself, to be a legal contract, must comply in all its points with local legislation to be applicable to the user. For this reason, I think that these practices are very different in the EU from those in the US, where legislation regarding privacy is conspicuous by its absence, that is, that US users should take these COX statements very seriously in their devices, although in the EU they must also be clear that Google and Apple know exactly what they do and where users live, although they are limited from selling this data to third parties.

Basics:

-- READ ALWAYS TOS AND PP

• Review the permissions of each app, leaving only the most essential ones
• Desactivate GPS if not used
• Review in Android every app with Exodus Privacy, maybe Lookout or MyCyberHome in iOS (Freemium apps !!!)
• Use as less possible apps from the store
• Be aware of discount apps from the Supermarket or Malls
• Don't store important data in the Phone (Banking, Medical...)

most phones will just struggle to record and process audio indeterminately without a noticeable impact on energy and data use.

I mean, it's still a valid concern for a commoner. Why my phone has twice the ram and twice the cores and is as slow as my previous one? I'd love to fuel this conspiracy into OS, app makers to do their fucking job.

There's no reason an app can weight more than 50mb on clean install*, and many socials, messengers fail to fit in. A client I use to write this is only 30+, and that's one person doing that for donations.

If there could be a raging theory that apps are selling your data to, like, China, there would be a push to decline it and optimize apps to fit that image.

* I obviously exclude games, synths, editors of any kind with their textures and templates.

What if the processing is done locally and the only thing they send back home is keywords for marketable products?

Fucking thank you. As I said in another reply, if this was true my firewall logs would be full, or my data cap blown in a week.

I agree.

What could be possible, would be maybe send tiny bits. For example, a device could categorize some places or times, detect out of pattern behaviours and just record a couple of seconds here and there, then send it to the server when requesting something else to avoid being suspicious. Or just pretend it's a "false positive" or whatever and say "sorry, I didn't get that."

I don't think they're listening to everything, but they could technically get something if they wanted to target you.

The advertisement literally tells you that they're doing it... The fuck are talking about it's made up? (https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/blog/active-listening-an-overview as an example)

from the same 404 article months ago.

Dec 14, 2023 (https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/) is months ago? Shit man... What the fuck are you high on?

It’s just they’re no longer afraid of telling us they are

They're also lying to themselves...

https://web.archive.org/web/20231214235444/https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/blog/active-listening-an-overview

Is Active Listening Legal?

We know what you're thinking. Is this even legal? The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page terms of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included.

They believe that just because the phone's owner agrees that it's legal. If my wife accepts a ToS that allows them to monitor her, and her phone is in my room listening to me... That's definitely NOT legal. This really needs to hit court sooner rather than later. This is wiretapping, this is illegal REGARDLESS of the ToS/EULA nonsense they want to claim covers them.

Edit: Even in one-party consent states this is illegal.

Maybe https://github.com/emanuele-f/PCAPdroid