Here’s a VICE article about how your smartphone is listening to the things that you are saying, and is serving you adverts based upon the things that you speak about.
It’s entitled:
Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia
Sadly though, it does appear to have ignited quite a lot of paranoia about the fact that your phone is listening.
Am I the only one not to have known about this before?
I didn’t think this was news. I thought that this was common knowledge. After all, access to the microphone is often part of the permissions that you give apps when you download or update them.
Am I the only one not to be hugely worried by it either?
I’m not routinely planning terrorist attacks or coups d’état (although…?). And if I did, I’d make sure that my phone wasn’t right next to me. And even if it was, I’d probably only get served some google ads about terrorist attacks and coups d’état.
In fact, given that I am going to be served ads while I am on the internet, I have no issue with targeted ads. I’m wont to ignore them all anyway, but at least they might be of some interest to me.