Was I hallucinating? Totally OT, perhaps relevant

[Richard Gaskin]

prothero wrote:

 > ...this did get me thinking about the spyware developed to listen in
 > on people’s smart phone microphone without the owner being logged in. 
 > Especially by intelligence agencies, but who would be interested in a
 > retire Santa Barbara faculty member. I will get on bitdefender’s list
 > with this question.

Please let us know what you find.

There's quite a controversy going on about how much of one's personal 
conversations the Facebook app listens to.

But there's no question that all voice-activated systems (Apple's Siri, 
Amazon's Alexa, Microsoft's Corana, Google's voice navigation) must 
listen at all times in order to be able to know when you call them by 
name.

It wouldn't be possible for them to do what they do without an always-on 
mic connected to the Internet.

At least Google (hopefully all of them) provides a place in account 
settings to hear the last several clips it sent to their server to try 
to determine if you were actually activating the voice service or just 
talking to someone in the room.

Once I listened to those clips, I was momentarily relieved to find 
nothing there of any particular interest, just me talking to my wife 
about shopping, with a friend in line at a movie, with my father-in-law 
over breakfast.

But right afterward I turned it off.  Never regretted it.  I only really 
used it in my car, and I'd driven for decades without it so I figure I 
can do a couple more decades without it as well.

Whether any of that always-on-mic-connected-live-to-the-Internet should 
be active or not while the screen is "locked" is something I can't say 
with confidence.  Even if designed to be a certain way, like webcams 
there's no guarantee it can't be abused.

Zuckerberg keeps tape over his laptop camera.

-- 
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Systems
  Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
  ____________________________________________________________________
  Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com