Facebook Says It's Not Secretly Recording You (fb.com)

An anonymous reader writes: In 2014 Facebook introduced a feature which can use your phone's microphone to identify songs you're listening to -- but "we don't record your conversations," they're reminding users. A mass communication professor at the University of South Florida tried discussing specific topics near her phone, then discovered Facebook appeared to be showing ads related to what she'd said. Though she wasn't convinced there was a link, the Independent newspaper reported that "The claim chimes with anecdotal reports online that the site appears to show ads for things that people have mentioned in passing."

An official statement Thursday reiterated that "Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed." But another news site sees these concerns as a reminder of all the permissions users routinely grant to their apps. "Go into your phone's application settings and you'll see a whole list of what an app like Facebook has access to: your camera, your location, your contacts, and, yes, your microphone too. How about this for a warning? By downloading Facebook you give the app 'permission to record audio at any time without your confirmation.' Tom's Guide security editor Paul Wagenseil says Facebook can...listen to your conversations...but it would be illegal to do so."
Meanwhile, the FBI "can neither confirm nor deny" that it's ever tapped an Amazon Echo device.

Comments

Complete lie and a distracting story

[axewolf]

"Facebook is not recording you, it would be illegal to do so, so therefore they are not doing it!"
How little self-respect you must have if you believe any such claim as this after the existence of mass surveillance has been revealed.

All of these little stories, which are posted here almost every day, are meant to nibble away at your outrage and underhandedly restore your trust in the government by soothsaying.

There is nothing mitigating the mass surveillance conspiracy. There are no checks or balances. As a society we looked at the evidence and did not act on it. There is no oversight.
That means it's going ahead and expanding.

There can be no freedom for people who are under total surveillance. It's life imprisonment. It's a hard and fast limit on your potential. Are you really content to have your own humanity and that of your children progressively reduced until there is nothing left? Most people are. If you're not, and you don't change your pattern of action radically, there will be no hope left for you or anyone else.

I keep an iron grip on what my phone does

[TigerPlish]

...or at least as much as an iron grip as Apple allows me.

But I tell ya what -- Facetwat is not on my phone. (yes, Facetwat is my derisive mashup of Facebook and Twitter.) And no, Twitter isn't on my phone. Neither is Tinder, or Snapchat or whatnot. You wanna reach me? Email me. Text me. iMessage me. Or fucking call me.

I honestly think Facetwat is a front for the NSA / FBI. Call be paranoid, call me whack-job, but Facetwat just seems too goddamned convenient.

And for the curious, this post was indeed lubricated liberally by hard carnauba wax and something Scottish and unpronounceable. *

*spent the afternoon waxing the english shitbox, and the early evening with a fine puertorican cigar and something scottish and unpronouncable. And end to a good day, devoid of Facetwat. How peaceful it is!