Is your phone spying on you?

A New York Times piece showed that millions of apps, used daily by us, are equipped with the software Alphonso.

Alphonso is a software that uses your phone microphone to listen to the ads on your television. It uses signals from the audio to collect TV viewing data, process that data and give you personalized ads, more fitting to you. Alphonso claims that they never record human speech, but this cannot be proven with certainty.

Smart devices like Google Home or Alexa are also becoming more popular. Such devices are usually triggered by a voice commands such as “Hey Alexa” or “Ok Google” but if you think about it these devices have to listen in order to respond to the commands. These devices have no way of knowing when you will summon them so these devices always have to be listening.

Apple phones now have a feature in their camera that allows you to take short 5 second clips: “live photos”. If you go to your camera app you can find a live photo feature: this feature, when turned on, records from 3 seconds before you press the button and for 3 seconds after. This is then cut down to 4 or 5 second video clip. But neither the phone, your camera, or Apple has any way of knowing when you are going to press the button. And the clip has footage of before you first clicked the button. So how do they know? Simple, it’s constantly recording. This can be proven too. All you have to do is turn on live photo, aim the camera at your hand then count to 3 with your fingers, but only press the button on 3. When you play it back it will show you counting from the first finger you put up. This has to mean that your camera was recording all the way from when you very first opened the app.

Have you ever been on the phone with someone and say… steak comes up during the conversation? Then, after you hang up you might scroll through your Facebook, and out of the blue a steak restaurant ad comes up? Sometimes people agree to these circumstances in which companies can access their information or microphones, without even knowing it. Often when setting up a device it will ask if you would like personalized ads, sometimes people agree to them without even knowing what they are agreeing to. If you click learn more, or bother to read the fine print, you might change your mind in no time. And even if you don’t agree to it, some apps are given permission to access your personal data simply by being opened or downloaded.

But why would a company do this? Why would a company as big as Apple spend time spying on a regular person, with a nine to five job and average income? Imagine this situation: you’re sitting inside enjoying your dinner on a Saturday night, when your doorbell rings. You go to answer the door, and a man in a dark coat is standing there. He says: “I am from Apple, can I watch your wife brush her hair again?” of course you would say no. So why aren’t we more worried of the possibility of this happening on devices? I certainly am, b

ut who am I to decide? I guess we will never know.