"It's probably happened to you at least once -- you're talking with someone about a particular topic, then shortly after, you see an ad related to that topic pop up in an app or website. It feels like someone is listening in, snatching keywords to serve you ads. Some people are genuinely convinced that companies like Apple, Google, or Meta are keeping our phone mics running constantly, looking to target advertising even more intrusively than they already are."
"Some individual apps have occasionally been caught sharing images and video data without user consent -- most notably in a 2018 Northeastern University study of 17,260 Android apps from Google Play, Anzhi, AppChina, and Mi.com -- but that's quite different from apps being allowed to record audio 24/7 with impunity. Officially, that would be a severe violation of Apple and Google's app store privacy policies."
"Speaking of rules, unauthorized recording would also violate the US federal Wiretap Act, not to mention various state-level laws requiring recording consent from both parties. It wouldn't make sense for a company to risk both criminal charges and civil lawsuits for the sake of better advertising, especially since it isn't guaranteed to result in more sales. I'm bombarded with ads every day, but any clicking on them is accidenta"
Instances of hearing a related ad after a conversation can feel like microphone eavesdropping, but there is no evidence of systematic corporate listening outside of spyware. Some governments deploy zero-click Pegasus spyware against dissidents, and some apps have shared images or video without consent, but recording audio 24/7 would breach Apple and Google app policies and violate US federal and state wiretapping laws. Companies would risk criminal charges and costly civil suits for uncertain advertising gains. The phenomenon is more plausibly explained by highly efficient online ad-targeting systems and data-driven tracking rather than sustained microphone surveillance.
Read at Pocket-lint
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