Reuters/Kim Kyung-Hoon
Almost every person with a smartphone has experienced this at some point or another. You discuss a certain product in real life and suddenly your news feeds on all your social media platforms are filled with ads for said product.
This has been going on for quite some time and yes it is perfectly legal. More often than not, we willingly accept application “permissions” that allow apps to access our microphones and cameras.
First and foremost it's important to understand why your device is listening to you. With android and IOS devices making up the bulk of the smartphone market, all of these devices come pre-installed with either Google Assistant (Hey Google) or Siri.
To work on command, these apps have to be listening in order to activate the moment you utter the magic words. This means that these apps are constantly collecting data based on your discussions to target you with ads based on them and to track your data.
This is pretty much the same way that ads get placed across the web and on your social media based on the sites you visit.
However, if you are not happy with your devices listening to you, there are a number of ways you can work around this. If a hardware solution is what you are looking for, you can buy smartphone covers that block cameras and microphones or even entire devices such as the Blackphone 2 whose developers claim cant be hacked or tracked. But you can also change your settings on your phone so that it doesn't allow apps to listen in on you:
For IOS Devices
Go to Settings > Siri & Search
Toggle off the following items:
○ “Listen for ‘Hey Siri’”
○ "Press Side button for Siri”
○ “Allow Siri When Locked”
Finally, when a pop-up window appears, tap “Turn Off Siri”
For Android
To turn off “Hey Google” or to stop “OK Google,” follow these steps:
Go to Settings and select
Google > Account Services > Search, Assistant & Voice > Voice
Select Voice Match and, finally, toggle off “Hey Google”
*Note: This will remove your Google assistant and Siri functionality
In addition to this, we might have unknowingly given other apps access to our microphones as well.
To disable mic access on iOS devices, navigate to Settings > [a specific application] > Settings, and then toggle off Microphone.
To disable mic access on Android devices, navigate to Settings > Applications > Applications Manager > [a specific application] > Permissions, and then select “Turn Off the mic.”
Bonus Tip: If you still feel like you would like to add an added layer of privacy, download the “Tor Browser” on Android or “Onion Browser” on IOS to browse the web anonymously without any of your data being tracked.
Since smartphones are getting “smarter” and integrating more into how we complete daily tasks, a number of privacy concerns have come to the fore. For example: You save time by using your voice to search for items on Google but pay the price in that voice note being recorded and used for ad targeting. We are, to a large extent, paying the price of privacy for convenience.