Image description: Elon Musk & X @elonmusk • 42m Just bought a new PC laptop and it won’t let me use it unless I create a Microsoft account, which also means giving their Al access to my computer! This is messed up. There used to be an option to skip signing into or creating a Microsoft account. Are you seeing this too? This is not cool of Microsoft.
(Originally published on mastodon.social: 2024-02-25)
I’m one of those. If it were true you’d get targeted ads for everything your phone hears from TV too.
Anecdotal: I had a friend go to New York. When he got back, I asked what he did while there, and (among other things) he told me that he saw a musical on Broadway.
I had heard of the musical before, but I’ve never searched for it or anything. The next day, I got an ad for it on YouTube.
Maybe it’s coincidental. I didn’t get ads for any of the other things he talked about. But I’ve never been to New York. I have no plans to go to New York. Why would I be getting ads for a musical only playing in New York?
They totally have data on who you are spending time with. they know your friend went there and know you saw that friend. That’s enough I think
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Just wanted to say thanks for writing this up. I had a similar experience and figured wifi and location was enough for google to make the connection, but I like the extra part you added about being associated through contacts app too.
I mean, most voice assistants have a way to teach it your voice. I imagine it would be trivial for it to learn your voice vs a TV voice given you are the person around your phone most often and it can eventually isolate your voice in a sea of noise
What they don’t have is the bandwidth. Plus it would be super easy to detect.
Process it all locally and someone will notice the battery hit. Process it remotely and someone will notice the bandwidth hit.
If it came out that they were listening in to every conversation, Congress would have an absolute field day. The Democrats won’t like the invasion of privacy and the Republicans would be happy for any excuse to go after “Big Tech”.
Why be obvious when you can quietly get better data? Why would Apple also play along this whole time?
They don’t actually listen in on you. That would blow through your battery pretty quick and send a lot of data.
They have even better ways, though.
They can triangulate your location using WiFi. Even if the SSIDs are brand new, they can figure out you’re close to someone by comparing the networks and their RSSIs. If you or the person you’re talking with searched for something or went to a website/app very recently before or after the chat, Google is likely to send you relevant ads.