286
Hundreds of smartphone apps are monitoring users through their microphones
(www.the-independent.com)
this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2025
286 points (83.7% liked)
Technology
69391 readers
2513 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related news or articles.
- Be excellent to each other!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, this includes using AI responses and summaries. To ask if your bot can be added please contact a mod.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
- Accounts 7 days and younger will have their posts automatically removed.
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Article is from 2018. Someone must have pasted the url from hacker news where the same story was dug up recently.
Is that to say that it's no longer valid? Or just that it's old news? The list of apps associated with the software is still pretty extensive; Google Assistant even showed up.
Well these days Android asks for more permissions so I guess it would prevent it in many cases by preventing access to the microphone for apps where you don't want to allow it...
Android also shows an indicator when any app is accessing the microphone or camera now.
https://nvd.nist.gov/vuln/detail/CVE-2023-21083
There are probably other exploits around that as well
Yeah, most people just click beyond that in a millisecond because it's just an an annoyance between them and the needed dopamine.
I think app stores can do a whole lot more, especially with he insane amounts of money they're earning from it (hello and fuck you, apple). They can make microphone access a special privilege that requires the developer to make a special request that gets verified on the app store before the app can be released, for example
I think a middle ground may be having that requirement for background mic usage, or usage without a specific user prompt that turns on a mic.
Lots of apps have legitimate use for the mic. Apps having legitimate use for the mic while you're not actively using the app on screen are more limited and need stricter permissions.
I'd also like to have a hardware mic mute switch that physically disconnects the mic, so I can just keep it off unless I want it like I do with the mic and Webcam on my computer.
it has always asked for mic permission so no change on that front
7 years is a long time in tech.
Google Assistant is supposed to listen for the "Hey Google" trigger word. How else do you expect to use your device hand-free.
No, 2018 wasn't 7 years ago... No... Wait please..! :'(
It also does it completely locally, using an on-device chip. If your phone has the Google assistant on it, disable all Internet and try the wake phrase, it'll work. Nothing else does, because it has to phone home for that, but the wake phrase handling IS on-device. Can't even turn the flashlight on otherwise tho lol, even if you use what we used to call the power button (new name for it? Lock button?) and type what you want it bitches about internet
Old news. It was old news in 2018