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Facebook Could Be Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls (news10.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is not just looking at user's personal information, interests, and online habits but also to your private conversations, revealed a new report. According to NBC report, this may be the case as Kelli Burns, a professor at University of South Florida states, "I don't think that people realize how much Facebook is tracking every move we're making online. Anything that you're doing on your phone, Facebook is watching." the professor said. Now how do you prove that? Professor Kelli tested out her theory by enabling the microphone feature, and talked about her desire to go on a safari, informing about the mode of transport she would take. "I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said aloud, phone in hand. The results were shocking, as less than 60 seconds later, the first post on her Facebook feed was about a safari story out of nowhere, which was then revealed that the story had been posted three hours earlier. And, after mentioning a jeep, a car ad also appeared on her page. On a support page, Facebook explains how this feature works: "No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update." I wonder how many people are actually aware of this.
I got my wife one of those $50 Amazon tablets recently. Removing the Facebook app increased her battery life by close to 60%. A significant part of the reason I paid the money for the Sunshine crack to own my Android phone was to get the Facebook app off my phone all together. The storage space it doesn't deserve, the battery life and bandwidth it hogs, not to mention the spying is way more trouble than Facebook is worth.
Sure, now I still have to deal with the Google and Amazon spying, but one bridge at a time.
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Android Marshmallow gives you the option to deny specific permissions an app asks for. I was kinda surprised at how many wanted access to the microphone and camera (that weren't sound or camera apps). It's getting to the point where I'm starting to think a mute button (physically disconnects the wires to your mic) and a physical cover to slide over any camera lenses are becoming a necessity.