Your Phone Is Listening and it's Not Paranoia

/e/OS Foundation & Community Data Privacy
22

Is it also valid for eOS on a common phone? What is the reason [of Google being able to track devices]?

23

Hiding in plain sight, literally: just look above there’s a picture from Youtube (if you check page source you’ll see it’s from img.youtube.com but it’s clear that it’s from youtube without any forensics). So they’ll get specifically that this picture was shown to your IP, from the referrer they’ll also get the specific page where you were. I’m not sure how’s with cross-domain cookies nowadays but it’s very likely if you ever logged in to your youtube/google account they’ll know you “personally”, not only that somebody from this IP visited now this page.

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24

Sadly, i’ve come to realise that e is also spying, or allowing spying, on me. I have experienced this.
Example: listen to on phone to a podcast on AntennaPod (with obscure name). Firefox subsequently suggested content related to verbal audio content. No, not paranoia, just plain old untrustworthy commercial tech intrusion.
I have other examples where verbal conversations in the proximity of the /e/ phone lead to novel advertising.
What to do?

25

Without any vaguely rigorous testing (as I started to describe above) you are just embarking on some kind of ghost-proofing exercise.

26

2 things to do:

  1. the best is to use the default browser. If you use other apps privacy cannot be guaranteed.
  2. if you notice any leaks of your privacy, please open a request on guitlab
27

Hello Jack,
There are many ways, advertisement industry collects information about you. Example given: AntennaPod, if has such code in it, can send to advertisers what you are listening to. Example 2: if you are using Facebook, or such apps, it is possible (although Facebook deny it), these apps indeed listen to your conversation, and send information to advertisers. Example 3: Google or other advertiser can get the IP you are listening from, and serve related ads to the same IP in the browser. That said, if you believe there is something wrong in the OS, please investigate and let us know.
Regards,
Shenol

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