Google preps Pixel ‘Audio Memory’ that ambiently tracks your ‘important conversations,’ like AI notetaker pins
fuck offffff
https://9to5google.com/2026/06/22/google-pixel-audio-memory/Open linkView original on piefed.world972
Comments304https://9to5google.com/2026/06/22/google-pixel-audio-memory/Open linkView original on piefed.world
Because all of their customers were clamoring for such a "feature"?
Of course, it will have the option of being "turned off".
I mean, we've all long suspected our phones are listening to us anyway, why not make it into a "feature".
Fuck you Pichai you fucking banchode.
TIL what a banchode is….
“Banchode” (often spelled “banchod” or “benchode”) is a vulgar Hindi/Gujarati slang insult roughly meaning “sister-fucker,” similar in strength to “motherfucker” in English.
Pronounced bench-o-day?
Ben-chode.. Add lots of fucking either before or after for authenticity
I am thinking about installing Graphene OS, any thoughts so far on how it work, or rather what hasn't worked on it? I am already using Brave and Proton and trying my best to get out of the AI overlord mess that is Google.
I use grapheneOS for many years now. I'm having some trouble coming up with things that haven't worked on it. I use Aurora as an alternate front end for google play, for downloading certain free apps.
I think I've seen problems with apps that check google store for purchase verification, but I don't personally have a google account or purchase android apps so it hasn't affected me.
Its nice if you are actually trying to stay away from Google. Its probably not the best experience if you still want to use their apps and services.
I prefer the experience. My phone doesnt try to get my attention or track me, at least as far as I can tell. Reminds me of when the first smart phones came out and they were just useful tools.
I am new to GrapheneOS, and I love it. However, it doesn't work with Google Pay, Wallet, or Moto Tag devices.
I also prefer the unbloated ROM and limiting what Google can do on my phone. However, this new captcha thing is worrying: https://www.digitaltrends.com/phones/the-makers-of-security-first-grapheneos-are-putting-google-and-apples-tactics-on-blast/
I'm at a point in my life where I just won't use a service or company if it won't work on my devices. Thats not likely to be a luxury everyone has so I know its not for everyone.
Second the req against Brave, the CEO is actively a fascist sympathizer.
Mullvad and Librewolf are both better, especially since Brave is Chrome-based and is going to stop supporting Manifest v2 when Google finally swings the axe.
Mullvad doesn't work on Android though correct? And if privacytests.org/android is to be believed, seems like Brave currently is the best of the bunch, unless you have seen something better?
Ironfix on Android is best equivalent to Mullvad on PC.
Also fuck Brave and its CEO and its crypto fascism bulkshit.
brave is not a good privacy choice (it has repeatedly shown that it is not to be trusted, it squeezes money out of you, and is run by a homophobic cryptobro (who is also the creator of javascript)
on android, use firefox or ironfox; on desktop, use librewolf
Anyway to set up Firefox on android to actually block tracking? Seems like it is just as leaky as Chrome, but maybe they have improved it.
not sure
i dont actually use android, i use an iphone, i just know quite a bit about this stuff
Anyway to set up Firefox on android to actually block tracking? Seems like it is just as leaky as Chrome, but maybe they have improved it.
Is mull not recommended anymore?
Mull was from DivestOS, which ended up folding a few years ago. Sad, cause I actually used it on a OnePlus 7T phone and it was a promising alternative to Graphene that similarly allowed for bootloader relocking. I really wish the team got the support it needed.
idk about it
ironfox is forked from it tho
Good to know, thanks!
Honestly, it an easy switch and you're going to love the control you regain.
Interesting how the majority of the comments refer to you being monitored on your own phone, ignoring that you will be monitored on everyone else's phone as well.
Much like how Facebook includes non-users in their social graph.
Probably something people aren't thinking about. How would this even work in two party consent states/countries?
The same way slopgen cleverly went around seemingly unbendable coryright laws: by ignoring the shit out of it, and half-scaring half-bribing the governments and the public to allow them to do whatever the fuck they want.
By
bribinglobbying local politicians. As always, laws are only real when they’re enforced.Which is also an important issue with google mail.
But this also violates the expectation that spoken conservations are private.
OK, how do you disable it permanently? Besides Graphene or mobile Linux?
Yes. To all of those.
I consider Graphine OS but on the other hand there is so little value left due to enshitification. A library card and a flip phone is probably the way to go.
This will be quite illegal in all countries and states that require 2 party consent at minimum.
Incoming Google lawsuits in 3, 2, 1.
lol. they are exempt from copyright, they will be somehow exempt from this too.
The internet is becoming a hostile place, filled with predators and hazards, a privilege only of the wealthy, the powerful and their slaves, was not on my bingo card for things I'd live through. I feel I may have no choice but to genuinely disconnect from all of it in my private life.
The people who called me crazy because "there's no way your phone can be listening in on you all the time" are the same people who are going to be the most excited about this "feature"
How did these people expect "Hey Siri" / "Hey Google" to work?
Im a perfect world, as they claim, its a secondary system listening that isn't recording or transmitting anything, and is meant to be low power. If it hears the wake up word, it wakes up the other mic and starts recording.
Thats how they claim the smart speakers work anyway.
This would be different.
This was my understanding, but I just don't believe it anymore. There have been way, way too many time my wife and I were talking about an incredibly niche thing that didn't come up through the internet in any way, and lo and behold the algorithm presented those key words. Nobody will ever convince me it isn't being done to some extent.
It doesn't need to, that's the issue, there is so much other data you are generating that can be harvested. Nothing you talk about is completely random, so it's incredibly easy to build profiles about you, without listening to a single word.
I understand that's the theory, but these situations were specifically not something that could be easily gleaned. We're talking like reminiscing about things that happened in our pre internet youth that there's no record of anywhere and that came up randomly in conversation. I'm definitely aware of the dynamic, even before ubiquity of the internet, it's true that sometimes companies would know people were pregnant before the person did based on their purchasing profile. This wasn't that though, there's just no possible connection.
That happened a few times now, so pretty much nothing is going to convince me it's not the case.
I think you'd be surprised, there is always a connection. Oh some middle aged millennial waxing poetic about nostalgia? Wow, totally haven't heard that before, and it's certainly not the singular thing every company is capitalizing on in media currently. No, you are absolutely unique and Google is simply listening to every conversation about you.
No, I wouldn't be, because I was talking about a random location which was indeed pretty unique. That said, it's a pleasure to finally meet you, I'm a big fan.
I had this happen many years ago, to the point there was no chance something wasn't listening. We suspected it was my partners iPhone with Facebook installed before they got better about preventing abuse like that, as it was a Facebook ad that showed up.
Were talking about something where we never use the product, would never use the product, but it came up in a conversation just between the 2 of us, and there were ads the next day.
It happened a few times.
It can't hear if it isn't already listening.
"How they claim?" Is there no way to confirm that?
You look for network traffic. You might not be able to see inside the packets, but you can know when they're sending packets, and how many. As far as I know, voice assistant systems that claim to use a secondary local circuit to detect calls are telling the truth.
That's kind of what I was wondering, I figured this as well as a way to track that it is at least sending data at unusual times. Someone else in this thread explained that actually determining what that data is would be difficult yeah: https://lemmy.world/post/48510943/24408747
I don't know enough about system security or forensics to evaluate this, but it does make sense based on what I know.
The consensus so far seems to be that they don't collect as much data as people think, partly because they can't process all of it, and partly because educated guesses are good enough to target ads often enough.
I have a memory of people black boxing it and seeing power usage and network traffic that supported the claims but that was a snapshot in time and as others note its all proprietary.
It takes a lifetime to build a good reputation, but you can lose it in a minute.
They ship with proprietary code, this would be the point of open source.
In practice in my experience, every company is at least skirting the law regarding privacy, and I never worked for one big enough that could lobby itself out of a fine.
would this not be detectable by tracking the data sent through your network?
I used to run forensic network capture and analysis tools.
First thing, traffic is encrypted. All you will see is a blob of traffic passing through. You used to see hostnames with TLS, but now with quic, you see nothing. This makes it hard.
You could root the phone and install a root ca certificate for a decrypting proxy, you might see more, but the data itself (not just the transport protocol) could be encoded or even encrypted within the network encapsulation.
Next, you'd have to reverse engineer the protocol if they're using something nonstandard. Also, malware can often be set up to "behave" when it can detect analysis. I'm all but certain Google would do this.
Maybe you could do statistical analysis of the traffic and attempt to baseline normal vs when it's transmitting audio. It would be a bit of a blind guess at best.
If I had more time, I'd love to try it. I have an old pixel7 pro. Maybe I can sort something out.
People have already done that and shown that no the device isn't listening to you 24/7 and sending all your data out. There are plenty of papers on the subject, and it makes sense. Why record, decode and analyze all audio when your digital footprint is so much easier to compile and analyze. People aren't random, so it's easy to put them into statistical buckets of how to target them. Here is one reference paper (of many): https://recon.meddle.mobi/papers/panoptispy18pets.pdf
If its real time monitoring you, but not if its logging data to send later when it would be expected to be doing so.
Audio doesnt take up much space.
Even if it was open source, you'd need to be able to verify what they ship matches the specs. Allowing you to flash whatever you want onto it helps, but you still need to validate the hardware.
I dont know. You'd need to reverse engineer the hardware and software to be confident, and could a OTA update then sneak a bypass in anyway?
Edit: i think Amazon might have abandoned this as well and always records on echos now too.
Doesn't need to track you all the time to know exactly who you are and what you're up to.
Continuously monitoring is such a waste of their resources, they already know everything about you, they just need to check in now and then to make sure you're buying the correct t-shirts.
This is really about training AI, isn’t it. They’ve tapped nearly all the sources of human text output already, so now they want to create as much more of it as possible, as quickly as possible. They will tap into conversations and use it as a new data source, mark my words.
They are so lazy they want an LLM to tell them what is hot and the only way they can do it is by massive spying. The surveillance state brought to us by fucking advertising of all things. So bizarre.
Yep, not just audio either. There is a reason the tech companies are pushing into glasses with cameras and it isn’t to make people’s lives better.
“There is a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you so sick at heart, that you can’t take part; you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon the levers, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop. And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, that unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!” — Mario Savio, 1964
GrapheneOS, asap Pixel owners.
Thank me later.
Before it's somehow no longer an option. I fear the Motorola deal will somehow get blocked.
Constant surveillance 😡
Audio memories 😍
BIG BROTHER IS
WATCHING YOUHELPING YOU REMEMBER YOUR IMPORTANT CONVERSATIONS
I saw this title and immediately said "fuck off" then clicked, and ..glad to see OP sharing my immediate sentiment.
JFC, I don't need tech tracking every goddamn word and fart.
I will happily send them all the farts they want.
And, of course, Google will honor this and any other setting, as always, right? Right?
As soon as they got away with "federated learning" (basically use your phone to train ai then just phone the results home rather than your data) 🤢 they knew they could just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until they have it all
If you've got an android, go into your phone's dev options and try to turn off Google's location tracking service, or the one that tracks screen inputs, or the one that checks what wifi networks are around you.
They've been dishonourable from day 1 :C
That's such bs short digital fingerprint is anything compressed and encrypted
Do not want
Dumb phones are about to start trending more and more every day.
I recently got rid of my smart watch when Samsung enshitified it and locked a bunch of features like weather updates behind an account, years after I bought the watch.
Now I have a dumb mechanical watch (quartz crystal, not spring winding) that will last years before I need to replace the battery. Everything it does, it does better than a smart watch. Not having to do the wrist flick gesture 1-3 times to check the time has been amazing. And I'm not constantly broadcasting Bluetooth anymore.
https://www.sensorwatch.net/
And graphene OS, maybe
Until Google decides to lock them out of any sort of verification process.
By then Motorola will have shipped the first round of "with Graphene pre installed" devices, assuming they stay with their plan.
or Linux phones
The Commodore Callback has perfect timing haha.
Really the only thing I'd miss with it is Google Wallet and Android Auto.
My only barrier to it is the T9 text input. I'm constantly writing notes on my phone. I would have a hard time if I had to T9 every note in.
Sure a dumb phone won't record for Google. Current ones don't and probably can't be made to.
But recording would be trivial to implement even on a dumb phone if it becomes acceptable to the majority. Hell it could become a legal requirement.
We cannot run away from these issues by using old phones, old vehicles, 'physical' media etc. Eventually they will be unavailable. Some, old vehicles, really should be for other reasons.
Or as others have pointed out, you might not be recorded by your phone but you will be by the others'.
We need to persuade more people to actively oppose such measures outright. Defend privacy, control of our devices etc explicitly.
Setting aside corporate surveillance, I have started to have a love/hate relationship with AI transcriptions in meetings. My auditory processing isn't great, so it is nice to have notes. And it's not replacing a job that someone was doing before. At the same time, it makes me feel more on edge. Everything I say becomes part of a permanent record. And I am part of a public institution, so that is subject to FOIA requests AFAIK.
The entire point of meetings and phone calls nowadays is that they can't later be subpoenaed. It's also why there are document retention policies in all major companies.
Reason n+1 for me being thankful for switching to GrapheneOS.
How’s the app support? I want to switch if/when the Motorola phones come out, but I’m wondering how many of my apps/services I’ll have to abandon.
Almost everything just works after installing sandboxed Google Play Services. For a few apps you have to tweak a setting to turn off some of GrapheneOS's exploit protections. But I've found very few that refuse to run, and nothing indispensable. If you don't like your main profile having Play Services you can set them up under a second profile or a private area and keep the apps that use them away from your main profile.
The other thing that might be a dealbreaker for you is no contactless payments with things like google wallet will work. But you could always just attach your credit card to the back of your phone and :tada: it works again lol
Contactless payments technically work fine, just not via Google Wallet. Banks that have their own tap to pay app usually don't have that problem.
You must be lucky to have such banks in your country.
There's several EU countries that do. Some of them as part of a push for sovereignty, but most, I think, cause they developed their solutions before Google Wallet was enabled in that country.
I'm unaware of anyone but curve, and curve seem to shadow-ban you for having rooted or weird phones and then claim kyc failure. In general they are quite shady and have poor customer service.
You know any other ones? Would be very useful since I think anyone in the eurozone could then use those.
I can confirm that the Sparkasse Mobiles Bezahlen in Germany works with GrapheneOS (Pixel 7 Pro)
There was no work profile support when I last tried to convert. deal breaker, atm.
That has been working fine for years at this point.
me and the other folks trying to get this working disagree. there are several threads about it on the GOS forum.
Yeah, I was thinking of separate profiles in general, and had never encountered the concept of an employer controlled separate profile. When I needed a device for something work related, I usually got issued a phone.
Those were the days....I used to have a personal phone, corporate phone and a site phone! The multi phone inconvenience was real....
Just grab an app like Shelter.
0% of the apps/methods available at the time worked with my employers setup. I did everything except the adb method. ended up getting a crap phone for work. it just sits on my desk anyway.
Oh, you mean a profile set up by your employer. Actually, dunno whether that works. I never let any employer touch a personal device.
that is the point of the work profile when used as the non-primary profile.
same phone; but work profile cannot see or interact with the primary profile or configure the device. if the corporate account is used as the primary, they can wipe the phone remotely.
Ive only got one gripe with it and its the requirement for RCS. I do prefer to use signal but genuinely only one person I know has gotten on to it. I hate using google messages but for folks that send me bulk pictures from iOS its just a hassle until there's a Foss one that works but there isnt to my knowledge. I do know RCS only works on the main profile goo
I switched a few months ago and overall its been an excellent experience. Some pitfalls though:
Overall though I would highly recommend. All the other main features work flawlessly.
One of my banking apps enabled Google Play attestation. It's really infuriating. I don't understand the point either - AFAIK all apps need to be signed with the dev's private key anyway, don't they? If they are then why would anyone care where I downloaded it from?
Take a look at OVMS (open vehicle monitoring system). I use it since I have an EV because I don't want to pay for "connected services".
Some bank apps may not work, but you can check by searching for you bank name + GrapheneOS
I found this list helpful: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/
I also found that one of the ones I use would only work in the Owner profile with Gplay services so the secondary profile wasn't an option for it.
I've had zero apps not work, including my banking apps.
Amazing for me tbh. I only had to give up contactless payment since my bank switched to google wallet and I have 0 google apps on my phone. Obtanium and Aurora store are life savers.
Doesn't help if someone you're talking to has it on. And unlike Zuck's stupid glasses you won't even be able to know unless you ask every single person you talk to first. This sucks.
It's probably illegal in Germany and some other EU countries. Not that that always stops Big Tech. But this one, at least in Germany, could land the user some jail time.
It's illegal in parts of the US too
You still gave your money to Google for the phone....
No, I gave it to the person who resold the phone at a lower cost than what I would've paid to get it from Don't Be Evil Inc.
based
What a useless and irrelevant comment that adds less than nothing to the conversation.
This would be such a cool thing, too bad it will only be used to scrape our data in order to sell us more ads. There are far too many technologies and concepts that have been ruined already due to bloody greed.
Hey, don't be so pessimistic.
For sure it will be available for government agencies to subpoena or even outright purchase.
This is the free market. Everything about you is for sale.
I'm sure this current administration and some oligarchs have been, and are, doing everything in their power to know as much about each of us as possible. With AI and some Doge 'behind the scenes' work, a bad actor could say "I want to know everyone who shows even a slight bent to the left" so we can target them." Control and manipulation is the point. Everyone reading this is a target. And I'm sure I'll be bumped up on their 'people to be concerned about' list after writing this.
Yeah the down side of Lemmy having an open API is that anyone at all can scrape it to train whatever they want.
I would advise doing as much as you can to not put real info about yourself on here (maybe even some fake info to poison it).
All the people in charge of everything are fucking leeches.
I got GrapheneOS
Honestly, I thought they already did that.
One of my motivations for becoming more privacy minded, was the amount of times a subject of conversation was delivered through an algorithm later.
It was creepy, talk about hose pipes> receive hosepipe content/ads.
I think so but now it's being marketed as a feature which is nauseating.
My creepiest experience was shopping at Lowe's and then getting recommendations on Amazon that night for drill bits and cabinet door handles. The thing is, I had purchased some drill bits at Lowe's so OK, but I had only stopped and looked at the cabinet door handles.
Your phone told advertisers you were located at Lowe's using GPS. Then your credit card company told advertisers you bought drill bits. If you looked up any cabinet door handles in the past, that data was given to advertisers too. They put all those pieces together to serve you more ads on drill bits and cabinet door handles.
A lot of stores keep track of which aisles you spend more time in, that information is then shared with their "partners" (ad networks). By the time you made it home, they had already shared that you bought bits and that your device spent a while looking at cabinet hardware.
https://easytechsolver.com/what-stores-use-bluetooth-beacons/
I'm sure there's more than a little Baader-Meinhof happening. I did expand my privacy a bit; pihole, searxng, some other stuff and I notice it less now. Or I think I do, humans are notoriously bad at this.
I have such a hard time believing it's not a phenomenon. I know coincidences happen, but mannn
I've been advertised things that my wife has talked to me about that i otherwise have no interest in. I absolutely believe my phone is listening.
Your wife probably searched them online. The advertisers got your public IP address to display ads of what was searched. It's so subtle and people leave digital bread crumbs everywhere that it gives the appearance that the phone is listening to you.
Truth be told it's more processing power and work to stream and auto transcribe everyone's audio from their phone. It's effortless to just scoop up all search and purchase data.
Yeah there's a "now playing" feature that will recognize music being played nearby, which I have found useful many times.
An AI note taker could actually be useful for some applications, like a meeting summary or play-by-play for a d&d session. It's just all the other stuff about AI that makes it shitty.
Sure. If you actively turn it on, and all involved know it's on. But this is always active as far as I'm aware.
I'm guessing it'll be toggle off, and it'll toggle itself back on every update.
In other words, they're taking your data for their use all the time, and sometimes they'll share your data with you.
You can have it off and just use the "song search" on the top menu, but yeah. I assume it just keeps itself activated even if you disable it, they just try to be less blatant about catering to you.
Anecdotally, I've only had lime 2 instances of "google was definitely listening to show me this ad" in the 6 years I've had pixels, and I've seen just as many instances with other phone types. You truly have to go out of your way to avoid the surveillance.
Creeps
Even if no one else could access it because it stayed on my device, I'm sure it'll be used for categorizing "advertising cohort" stuff again.
It sucks having to be so skeptical. With my severe ADHD something like this would be enormously helpful for remembering conversations others I talk to remember just fine but I don't.
Here's the larger problem: other people will have this bullshit turned on and the microphones will receive the speech audio of everyone in their vicinity. It's fully breaking consent to be recorded for others.
I do not care what they might say about "listening only to the owner" or whatever they will claim. If it's recording with a microphone, then it will receive sound.
Now turn it into a black mirror episode where the corporation controls your memories
Can't wait for the gaslighting marketing option. Google: "remember that you wanted to buy this?"
Any soviet officials still alive must be going crazy: "wait, they actually pay to be surveilled???"
I'd trust talking revolution with a soviet commissar more than I'd ever trust a modern day company listening in on my everyday everything.
I got banned from Reddit for:
They're scared. You hear me, Peter? I'm coming for you with carrots and onions.
Yes reddit is controlled by the epstein class we all know this
Fucking Reddit.
Soylent green is made of Peter Thiel!
I feel like that would be Soylent Putrid Brown or Boyblood Red
Mirepoix du Thiel
This guy cooks
So what could be a really useful thing is now just a 24/7 surveilance device that will record everything, even when you have sex, when you talk about fantasies and so on.
I guarantee you that in no time the justice department will be interested in having access to all that
Minority report coming true daily
Funny thing is I already thought of two angles that might make people willingly use that:
I don't think that audio only would be enough for #1 and for #2 oh god fucking no, that easily can and would be abused to hell and back and that would for sure slam the last nail in the coffin of basic human interaction. Yes, doh, rape bad, of course, but if you regulate the shit out of human behaviour we just stop being human beings anymore.
Sex is complicated, rape even more so. Anytime I see these "one easy fix" for these complicated issues I get very nervous, it's not how that works
wtf??? doesnt make it any less extreme privacy violation
for 1: record it yourself consciously (if youre not comfortable with that then why are you comfortable with Google doing it)
for 2: there are other solutions, law enforcement isnt an excuse to violate privacy at all, the government is one of the major things we want privacy against
I didn't say it wasn't a privacy issue, just that those are two reasons that some would probably just accept that shit.
Just like most of us accept the spy devices we already use because they allow communication and internet access and only a tiny portion of people go out of their way to try to reduce that (though due to how cell phones work at all, you can't avoid the simple "this is where their phone was at this time" tracking, which might be "vicinity of cell tower" or "about right here" depending on whether any triangulation was involved).
Motorola needs to release those GrapheneOS compatible phones now 💀
Hopefully also as a supported option to the existing phones. I've got a Fold and switching is sounding pretty good right now...
Welcome to your "I only buy vintage tech" era.
Mine started when 3.5 mm audio jacks started disappearing. We all draw a line.
Alternatively - the pocket computer revolution is beginning. Hell, many in my tech circles are making cyberdecks and the sorts with hopes of only using a phone to make and receive calls. Disconnect from the 'big' in Big Tech, not the tech :D
Technology divergence is inevitable after corporations saw that convergence into an “all in one device” made their work much simpler.
No surprise feature phones, MP3 players and dedicated-use devices are making a comeback. My wish is for full pocket computers to return.
Well there are adapter cables USB-C to 3.5mm. On my previous phone in my car I used a splitting cable to power it while using the 3.5mm as input to the car radio. However on my new phone Samsung decided to not support it anymore -.-
They don't always work good. I've tried many even Apple versions. It's finicky somewhat for the audio to pickup like in a car with an aux to the adapter to phone usbc. They do work. Just not perfect. Still prefer 3.5mm jacks and wired headphones. Wireless junk has almost always been a scam to me. Batteries and bluetooth wear out.
I'm going off memory here, but I think this was an issue way back with some phones having DAC hardware built in, and others skipping that hardware in exchange for requiring dongles that included such?
Maybe you just need to find a new dongle? Hopefully that helps and sorry if it doesn't, but I'd rather just have a headphone jack back and skip all the complications...
I agree but we all carry spy devices with us, it's too late.
I love the idea. Having a sortable, searchable list of everything that hits my plate day to day would be an awesome boon, I simply don't want anyone else to have that data :(
Outside of the MASSIVE security concerns that this would present, this would be an immensely helpful feature for me.
Yeah, me too. But I find not getting really hammered achieves a similar thing. I'm working on that.
I already get "random" ads for things that were only part of a verbal conversation that happened to be near the phone.
What I want is a physical kill switch for the mic and camera, less surveillance not more.
Even though it's not technically physical, GrapheneOS does have switches for both the camera and mic that disable them at the system level.
So if you answer a call, for example, you're prompted to unblock the mic because the phone app is requesting to use the mic.
the pinephone has such kill switches
That's been happening for well over a decade now, and while "respectable security researchers" call it bullshit... there's simply too much anecdotal evidence for it to happen organically.
The reality is they don't need to listen.
They have so much data on users.
It just goes on and on and on.
People think they are unique but they are not as unique as they think.
You're right that they don't need to, but in reality they do whether they announce it or not.
In 2017 I tested this at home alone in my apartment in by myself using my smarphone by finding a site with lots of banner ads, monologing next to my phone about a topic with no relation to my current life at the time for about a minute, then refreshing the page. To my horror, the exact thing I was monologing about showed up on every single banner ad. Nothing in my life was going on related to that topic and the only thing connecting me and the topic was my own vocal words.
That was the moment I decided to avoid Google/big tech for the rest of my life.
NONE of that data can predict a random occurrence discussion that goes in a specific direction.
A great example is something that happened to me in 2015. One night I was out with friends, and one of them had a really bad panic attack. The next day I was discussing it with a colleague during a smoke break, who recommended he gets a clip-on pulse oximeter. No searches, nothing, literally just a half minute detour in our chat. I repeat, nothing was typed in or looked up or in any way entered into any computer intentionally.
Five minutes later we're sitting in front of our respective computers and I start getting ads for the very thing. Mind you, we're still at a point where nothing noted during this discussion was entered into any computer. Explain this.
Did anyone you were with the night of the panic attack search for what to do? Or texted anyone about it?
They can link you to other people by networks or nearby devices. Especially if you're frequently around those people.
It would have been more concerning if your coworker got the ads.
Nope, as only ~4 people remained at that point, and they wouldn't even be thinking of researching this topic.
Friend, or friends discussed said panic attack on big tech social in DMs or something. Obviously, you follow your friends, you are likely to go out on Saturdays with them, maybe even your first name was mentioned in their messages, you are now tied to an advertising angle for 'Panick Attacks'. Data brokers buy this information, serve ads. This is just ONE way the data may have been inferred. This doesn't include contact scanning, location services and so on.
No such discussion happened. As per above, that group of people were super toxic and couldn't care less about this specific person...
At most the remaining people would've mentioned how his panic attack inconvenienced their night out.
"who you are near" does.
Someone that has recently purchased something might talk about it.
Someone that has commented on a news article might talk about it.
Someone has a panic attack and googles what to do about it.
Huh, and that's 2015, before pulseoxen were common household medical supplies like thermometers.
Something smells fucky for sure
Okay but how does all of that
Tell them I'm in the market for a toilet seat?
And then forget to tell them - I only need 1 toilet seat?
that's an easy one.
google is an ad company, their main customers are the people who buy ads, pretending you need a toilet seat let's them charge toilet seat makers more to "target" you
All the toilets in your building / neighborhood were installed all the same time and your need for a toilet seat likely matches the average lifespan of that item. They see this, they see you bought a toilet seat.
They don't sell ads directly for you though. The do sell ads to people your age in your location that might need a toilet seat. They might also know that that item has a high return rate. On the chance you return it they want to sell the opportunity to advertise to you for more to potential customers (ad buyers)
It just goes on and on.
Except they think I'm a 65 year old radiological oncologist in Florida named [my name]. First off, my name is unusual enough that I used to keep tabs on all 13 of us. (you get really bored in the hospital unless you give yourself something to do) None of us work in medicine (well I offer some medical CPEs but that's education, not medicine) I've lived in the hospital I guess. None of us live in Florida. The most famous of us used to be a hockey player, but he hasn't done shit lately. He's been to Florida. I'm sure. There's a hickey team there in Miami, right?
I have been getting ads for stents and sutures and clips and bullshit like isn't this supposed to be the dude who aims the radiation gun and burns out the cancer? For 25 godsdamned years. How long has goggle existed? That long. I don't know how I fucked their profile of me but I managed it somehow.
I always wonder whether we're getting it backwards.
Like, did you see ads for kayaks because you had that conversation about kayaking, or did you have the conversation because an ad company/social network decided it was time for you to get into kayaking?
It may not even be that they advertised kayaking to you. They may just have a very good model of your behaviour that predicts you're likely to be interested in kayaking.
Honestly this is scarier, and harder to understand. But I suspect it to be the case
Not that hard to understand. They have an extremely large dataset to analyze for “subjects adjacent to these searches” and it returns “kayaking” among other things. Then just show ads for those related things. You ignore the things you’re not considering as background noise, and notice the ones related to your new hobby.
Sorry, harder to understand for the general population. Most people just think their phones are listening to them.
Ah fair enough
I'm figuring it's smart TVs and smart speakers, not the phones
I have one smart TV and a few streaming devices, none of which have microphones. Yes that includes the remotes. I have zero smart speakers even plugged in to power.
I do have one smart phone with a least one microphone though.
It's not all that exciting. If the person you had the conversation with searches for the thing and they're in proximity or on the same network, they can link you to them.
Except as I said NOBODY looked up the term. How many times and in how many forms do I have to state that the MENTION of pulse oximeters was: verbal only, in no way entered into a computer before I started getting the adverts?
The discussion itself wasn't even that long, colleague asked why I looked so tired, I told him how the previous night we had to call an ambulance and sort the guy out, colleague said "maybe he should get a cheap pulse oximeter, it can be helpful to predict attacks and handle them without a call [for an ambulance]", and that was it. Topic was dropped.
And no, mutual friends didn't look it up either as they didn't care much for the guy (tbf it was a super toxic community I'm glad I've left behind).
Except that doesn't happen.
Yes, it does
OK buddy, you can win the internet argument if it's that important to you. Just completely gloss over what I was telling you actually occurs so you can be right. 🙄
Are you familiar with ultrasonic cross-device tracking?
It's an actual technology that's in use in some places we know of and likely a lot more that we don't, because who in marketing/advertising WOULDN'T leverage that power if it was an easily accomplished thing?
Should be legally mandated in the surveillance environment we are in.
I'm pretty sure fairphone has that hardwired killswitch
Sadly no, the physical switch recently introduced with FP 6 is by default to activate a distraction-free mode. It can be changed to other features that do not include mic/camera. Furthermore, it implies it's all software managed, nowhere close to the security of real physical kill switch for mic and camera. https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/27533345946258-Switch-button-Settings
Fucking yikes
I already have a voice recorder app on my phone, thanks.
But, but, it's so inconvenient to have to pull out your phone, find your app, turn it on, then turn it off again. So much easier if the dirty G just does it for you. I know I can't wait for this perfectly secure, privacy respecting feature, to invade my personal life
And this is why I de-googled my phones. Fuck off with that surveillance bullshit.
Illegal in Germany. You may not record conversations, if you try to enter something like that as evidence you'll get punished as well.
I suspect there are many countries with laws like that, and if your phone actually disables the feature when you enter them or just let's you hang to dry...
Doubt. The law likely talks about making unauthorized recordings. There is likely nothing in the law that would disallow automatic transcription if no recording is created.
Unless the law is extremely vague such as “it is unlawful for a microphone to pick up conversations” the law likely doesn’t cover this situation.
I am more than happy (and eager) to be proven wrong, but in my experience the law tends to lag behind tech by quite a bit.
I didn't check the actual law, always a good idea to do so.
So, §201 StGB actually covers both, it is forbidden to "aufnehmen" (record) as well as "mithören" (spy on). Bonus, its forbidden to cite transcription (im Wortlaut mitteilen).
Its an old law, going back to video cameras with magnetic tape and actually tapping a phone line. So it was used quite often, including the mentioned fake surveillance cameras, that didn't record or even view anything but seemed to the public they did.
When dashcams became a thing people would be sentenced for using them. These days you can use dashcams, but never save for more than 24h or show the recording to anyone but the police/court.
I guess the law is a relict of living next door to Stasi, but its really just a guess of mine.
If huge tech corps are good at anything, it's swerving around laws or simply deciding to ignore them.
They'll argue that since you consented, it's not spying.
And they'll put something in the terms that it's your responsibility to inform people around that your or their conversations will be recorded (lol, as if anyone would - but they'll claim that as a defence).
And if they end up in court and get fined, even millions is just a slap on the wrist compared to how much they made from all that juicy data.
Laws will not stop them.
Google is not breaking the (German) law here, it actually is your responsibility as a user to not spy on people. Failure to do so means up to three years in jail, for a first offender most likely a fine. And your device that you used to break the law might get confiscated.
The later was already the case when people used radar warner apps (banned on Germany as well) and lost their smartphone for that.
I wonder if there's a legal loophole here? Specifically this works by transcribing "important conversations" into text, it's not actually storing .mp3 recordings. Obviously still disgusting and I hate it.
The legal loophole is Google can afford to pay the fine. They make more money breaking ze law than they do following they law
This right here. Companies like Google effectively have infinite money and it's not a big deal for them to pay off the (usually miniscule) fines that they get hit with.
No, the user breaks this law, not the manufacturer. So the loophole for google is, they don't care about you.
Not a lawyer, but as far as I got it, the storing isn't the punishable part, the recording is.
You can't have security cameras filming public spaces (like the road in front of your house). Even if its dummies, as people couldn't tell the difference whether the camera actually films them or not.
They'll just use parallel construction
No need to, there is no fruit of the poisonous tree in German law. Police can strip search you in bright daylight on a crowded square for no reason - clearly illegal, bit what they find will be used to proscute you. The officers will be punished as well, at most with a stern talking to.
Illegal in parts of the U.S. as well
Because they weren't already listening in?
They don’t need to hide it anymore thanks to all surveillance legislations. So it can be marketed as feature.
Really looking forward for graphene firmware for Motorola phones.
No, they just now legally have to tell you (like when they had to start asking for your location instead of just having it.)
I believe that the idea is genuinely good; however if you think about all the data that leaves your phone and that can be used for tracking, spying and so on, it gets disgusting.
i think that a lot recently. so many great technologies that cannot be trusted in the hands of corporations. and sadly, people then reject technology instead of demanding a version in public domain.
The technologies honestly don't seem that great anyway. I was happier before slop, and I don't know why people are so excited about slop generators.
I'm thinking more broadly. Think about WiFi mapping for localization, crowd sourced geo data like traffic warnings, health data tracking, cashless payment, smart home applications, etc. All of them provide real benefit to people but right now, they are a facade for corporate profit interests.
Thank god I have Graphene.
my pixel phone overheats and has shitty battery...
From all the listening in its doing /s
it's the crappy modem and SOC. I'm running a custom rom ofc.
Um, oh fuck no.
The reams of personally-identifiable information that will leak is insane.
We're not allowed to have Siri and Alexa listening when we're working, lest a stray word on a phone call from the home office risks a privacy breach.
First setting change, turn off audio memory.
And somehow, it automatically gets re-enabled in a next update. Urgh...
Next update? No, it’s re-enabled automatically when ever you have an important conversation, that way you can’t forget to turn it back on!
I hate what google has become.
I can remember my own coversations myself, thanks.
And what I feel I might both need and forget I'll write down Either on the phone or using pen and paper.
Aaaand it's Niantic all over again.
How do I opt-out?
linux or degoogled android distros
http://iode.tech/
https://grapheneos.org/
Can’t wait for the compatible moto phones
By using a de-googled phone...
So, my options are iPhone or Graphene?
I m trying SailfishOS with the new Jolla Phone. Only a suitable choice for nerds I suppose, but that's not an issue for me.
How's banking working on Sailfish? Seriously considering Jolla for my next phone but it must work with my bank app.
Depends on your bank. Many Apps work with compatibility layer, some don't. There is a community compiled comoatibility list: https://forum.sailfishos.org/t/banking-apps-on-sailfish-os/18438
Me personally, I like to get rid of my banking app entirely. Maybe I am old but I do banking onky on my Desktop system anyway.
I move around quite a bit and pack light so my desktop/laptop are not always an option. Sad as it may be, my phone is pretty much my main computer.
Probably not that good, because unless your bank can be run fully through the web it will probably detect exactly the same (maybe more) things that wouldn't go through on things like Graphene.
It's easy to imagine scenarios where something like this could be useful. Sometimes very, very useful. "Hey Google, I spent the last 20 minutes speaking to a police officer, be sure to keep and transcribe all that."
But no one's going to trust it (no one should trust it) because it's offered by a big tech company. "Of course this new service is designed to be used against us," we correctly assume.
Google: sorry, we work for the police, so that audio was not recorded.
Or it accidentally got the wording wrong, oops
This is where I'm at.
I've got a really bad memory. Ever since seeing Iron Man (I was never into the comics), I've dreamed of having a JARVIS-esque virtual assistant, something that could be omnipresent in my life to document and recall and remind and suggest and...
I'd be willing to pay for it, too. $100-$150 a month, maybe more, would be well worth it to keep my life from spiraling, like it has a tendency to do. But it would have to be my data. Never used for anything but myself. And that's just unacceptable to the Tech Bros.
With self-hosted LLMs continuing to get better and cheaper, maybe this will happen in my lifetime. 🤞
Yeah no fuck that
"For Pixel Phones". So it's a hardware thing... for now.
They have been doing this with Nest for years. Lots of reports of people saying something random and suddenly getting ads. Say no secrets!
It's sad I never realized how many things have microphones in my room. I wondered all the different ways advertisers can use audio for targeted ads the other day and came across an article recently talking about how the CIA was able to tap into Smart Samsung TVs and spoof the speaker light to not be on. Its a fucking scary world we live in.
Just in my peripheral we have smart TV with mic in the remote, laptop with mic, phone with mic, PS5 Controller with mic, Switch 2 with one and an IR Camera in both controllers, overear Headphones and ear pods both have mics, PC Webcam has one, tablet has one, and smartwatch has one. Like bruh.
Keep shit unplugged when not in use.
If you weren't aware, speakers can be used as microphones.
Interestingly Zuckerberg used to have a sticker over the camera on computer monitor. He was well aware a decade or so ago.
amazon did this with alexa, not surprising.
I hope this is exclusive to newer models and leaves my 8 pro alone.. fuck Google
The pixel line has had dedicated AI chip/functionality for several generations
Yes, but a good chunk of feature updates notate certain features only works on 9 and up or 10 and up despite no apparent reason, at least to myself why it wouldn't work on the 8 series
Yeah it's hard to tell which way it'll go, some features get gated away as an incentive to upgrade
Big Brother Google is always listening, and probably would sell anything they've recorded to make a buck.
Maybe a lot of people in 2-party consent required jurisdictions should write in to google to state that they explicitly decline to consent to being recorded by google's bullshit
I need a lot of tshirts with writing, that i do not consent to picture, audio capture, capture of biometrics from me and so on. Maybe here in Europe it may help a little.
It'll have the same level of legal power as those facebook boomerposts of "I do not allow zuck or facebook to use my likeness for any reason"
Yes that's true. But I think if I would sue someone it could have some weight but for this you have to know it, proove it and sue someone. I would wear it more as a statement.
Oh yeah? I’d like to see them parse it when i switch to talking in igpay atinlay
Fuck you this is my idea
No fucking thank you 😒
How much long before Apple does this if they aren’t already?
Creepy but this would be very helpful. Hopefully it's on device instead of the cloud.
Wait for the release, see if it's immediately available in Europe: if it is, it's not just local anyway, this is Google... ಠ_ಠ
Just switched from Pixel 8 Pro to iPhone. Looking like that was a good decision even though iOS is a shitshow to use in comparison.
use a phone with linux or a degoogled android distro
The biggest douchbags in the world, besides billionaires, are the people who still use Google—including Gmail and chromium based browsers.
Are you a douchebag? Let me hear your crybaby bullshit.
(Not you OP)
Personally, I think the real douchebags are web devs who only build and test for chromium based browsers, making some critical tools completely unusable on Firefox/Linux systems. Looking at you, Chase.com.
Really, anyone who develops third-party software that entrenches monopolies.
idk about you but never had an issue with chase's website on Firefox that prevented me from using it.
Yeah, I use Chase on Firefox every month with no issues.
You’re probably just out of date. I had some issues recently on Waterfox, realized I was running a not-super-new version, and things worked great after I updated the flatpak.
It's almost like true douchebags are the ones who are completely unaware of how the real world works and think everyone in the world should warp their worldview around what they think is personally most important.
The real world of supporting privacy invasion?
It' s easy to dismiss everyone as "douchebag" if they don't align with your world views.
The world view that privacy invasion is a bad thing.
There are more pressing things in the world. Doesn't make someone a douchebag for having more appropriate priorities.
Enjoy having all your conversations recorded. Be sure to tell your friends they’re being recorded when they are around you.
I use chromium for a few sites and I use gmail and youtube,
Guess what that makes you ;)
A douchebag? Sounds like an upgrade from a total loser. :)
Were you a total loser before?
yes