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Comment by fogihujy | Hacker News Reader

Normally, I'd ignore any marketing touting new privacy features in iOS, but Facebook's response has convinced me this isn't just an empty gesture from Apple.

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I wholly internalized that there was a real problem when I started taking my phone to other parts of the house, placing it in a drawer before returning and shutting the door to have an in person conversation with someone.

I'm not sure why this is getting down-voted, but I think the point here is the _fact_ that you have been put in a situation where, as an individual, you are concerned enough to do this is telling, crazy or not

You are right on - the fact that I even needed to think about whether I should have to be concerned with it is where I was headed.

Devices do listen to all sounds to listen for their "prompt" - how do I know what is actually discarded? And with precedence, I don't think it is 'crazy'.

Example: https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2018/05/25/614470096...

Anybody that doesn’t know the code their device is running is a fool to trust it by default. Even knowing the code well, devices are compromised all the time. Yours seems like the lone sane opinion here.

We don't know the code of HN but we trust it because we can see the inputs, outputs, and trust the admins running it. A lot of people trust Google/Apple for the same reason to keep their devices secure but are aware that they might need to stay up-to-date and give up freedom [to install unverified apps] to achieve that security.

HN also does not have a microphone sitting here for me constantly listening for me to say "OK HN, post response". It is running as a pull HTTP connection in a sandboxed browser. I do not need to imply any trust in them provided they don't have some zero day exploit running to escape my browser and hijack my system.

Just as if my location/microphone were able to be physically turned off on my phone I would not have to trust that someone isn't always listening in on me. If I can't do that it is not unreasonable not to trust it. There have been plenty of instances of these things being abused.

I didn't downvote, but "It doesn't matter if it's true, It's bad that I'm concerned" is used to justify all sorts of alarmist policies. Right now that's what's being used to restrict voting rights across the US and has been used for a long time to justify NIMBY and tough on crime policies regardless of evidence.

There are differences between these scenarios. In one case we have an individual who made a personal decision that does not affect anyone else. The contrary examples are of people imposing their will upon others to restrict the rights of others. There is very little one should do about the beliefs of others, regardless of what the evidence supports, unless it affects the rights of others.

I do have precedence in logic, right? Alexa/Siri/etc must listen for their voice cue prompts to activate, and discarding all other discussion. So I must trust that corporation would discard if not applicable. Without a hardware cutoff switch for a mic - it is blind trust, isn't it?

This is really, really bad reasoning. Basically you're saying that there's no point in countering wildly untrue conspiracies with facts or evidence, the mere fact that people believe the conspiracies means they might as well be true?

(I'm not making a claim either way on whether or not in this case it's true that devices are spying on us, just that this line or thinking is absurd that it doesn't really matter if a given thing is true)

I remember back in 2002 when I took a college course on Computer Security and the prof told story after harrowing story of the lengths to which spy agencies went to get the information they were after. I remember thinking, "Well if the NSA really wanted to track everyone and record everything that was ever transmitted over the internet, I suppose they could. But nah, that's crazy."

Fast forward to 2013 and Snowden.

Our defaults for "they wouldn't do that" when it comes to your privacy are all wrong.

If that's a "conspiracy theory" that you need to dismiss so that you can go about your life, fine. But the truth is, these people are constantly up to no good and you can't trust closed software nor hardware. The technical capability for draconian mass surveillance exists.

The poster you're replying to did not say that AMZN/GOOG/AAPL wouldn't spy on you, they simply stated that evidence should be considered to justify claims, especially if you're trying to spread those claims to other people. Your argument "we should sound alarms without evidence because tomorrow we'll have evidence" is classic conspiracy theory reasoning, which is why people will classify you as one. In essence, we shouldn't throw people in jail for crimes they haven't committed yet.

I believe the post in question believes they have enough evidence to justify the actions and is speaking from a position of surprise/resignation at the state of things.

Kind if like, 'I cant believe it's come to this, but given all the evidence, it's justified."

The issue is: We can't prove it either way. We can make law which increases the risk if they are uncovered and hope they abide to it (see GDPR and California Law for attempts in that direction) but a prove is hard.

At the same time we see the incentives, and the incentives are to collect and analyze things.

That's a pretty big leap. The OP was talking about putting their phone in a drawer, not throwing people in jail without a trial. I, for one, don't blame them one bit.

The leap you make to punish someone is much further than the one you take to protect yourself, i.e. locking your own device away for a moment.

Is it absurd? My leap seems smaller and more logical than the alternative. The technical fact is that each of these features exist, and are used daily.

A device which does not have a hardware cutoff switch, which you've allowed to listen for it's own prompts ("Hey Siri, etc") can listen to you. So far we're all speaking "current knowns". Nothing about that is conspiracy.

The trust part is "storage of data received" and "use of that data". Sure it probably does not today - but will the terms of service change tomorrow?

An example parallel are Alexa devices listening, and accidentally storing whole convos.

This logic could be used to say there is a problem that some people believe they need to wear tinfoil hats to stop mind-reading. No, we should help them seek medical help. It's easily verifiable to check if your phone is sending data, so if they're concerned, they can check that like many people do and find out what data is being sent. But stopping a conversation midway through to hide your phone to continue to talk while not being a major underworld criminal is a worrying level of paranoia. If you are an underworld criminal, what are you doing with a phone? Didn't you see what happened to encrochat?

Ha - nothing subversive or illegitimate! I'm an engineer ha. The effort cost is minimal (walking to another room) - the downside cost if I was wrong (data mining by a social app for ads) was worth it.

Insurance companies analyze purchase records for modeling lifestyle risk.... if I were discussing a family member who had a health scare how do I know that info isn't 'surfaced' to insurers, etc?

If I were that worried, I'd just get rid of the phone!

Apps cannot use the microphone on iOS 14 without your awareness. There is a little dot that will show up at the top of the screen if an app has recently used microphone or camera. Hopefully this can assuage your paranoia.

The dot seems to not be interactive, i.e. I won't be able to find out which app it was, and what it did. But it's a start!

If you drag open the control center it tells you which app used it recently.

Open control center. At the top it'll say what app was using the mic or video.

https://i.judge.sh/frank/Derpy/chrome_0aklMR0vP4.png

https://i.judge.sh/careless/Flutter/chrome_Vm3HAfRnaQ.png

The dot is just for the foreground app. If a background app uses the mic, your clock turns red (for recording) or green (for a phone call) in an even more obvious way, and tapping it takes you to the app that is doing so.

I've started using the mobile sites for companies like Facebook that I kind of need to use occasionally but really don't want their horrifying app on my phone.

It's kind of fascinating how hard they (not just Facebook) push you to use their "so much better" app even when their HTML version seems just as good if not better. It's just so much better for them. If you try the app and it's not better then you know what it's really about.

If you're on Android I recommend Frost: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.pitchedapps.frost/

My daughter uses Messenger Kids to interact with her friends, now that COVID means she can’t see any of them in real life. (It wouldn’t have been my first choice, but it’s what all the other kids are on, so we have no real choice.)

If she adds a friend, it’ll send me a messenger message telling me I have to approve it, with a link. If I try to follow that link, it will tell me that my desktop browser can’t be used to manage Messenger Kids and that I have to install the app on my phone. Although it seems like in most cases you can open up Messenger Kids in the panel on the left, and then there will be an approve/deny button, so it’s mostly lies that you can’t do this on desktop.

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