Are smartphones listening to us? Experts answer

In today's world, smartphones almost never leave our hands. A study by price comparison platform Uswitch reveals that young people aged 18-24 in the UK use smartphones for an average of 4 hours and 37 minutes a day. This increase in usage times brings with it concerns about digital privacy and security of personal data.

In daily life, shortly after talking about a product, one encounters advertisements for that product on social media, causing the question "Are our phones listening to us?" frequently raises the question. While more than 194 thousand searches were made on the subject on the social media platform TikTok, even a single post containing the allegations was viewed more than 250 thousand times, revealing the extent of concern.

ARE PHONES REALLY LISTENING TO US?

Experts responding to these allegations state that the situation does not work as expected. Smartphones; In order to activate voice assistants such as Siri, Google Assistant and Alexa, it passively listens to commands such as "Hey Siri" and offers personalized suggestions according to user demands. However, there is no concrete evidence that general conversations in the environment are secretly recorded and shared with advertisers.

In his statement on the subject, Instagram Director Adam Mosseri flatly rejected the allegations that the application was listening to users. Mosseri; He stated that seeing a discussed topic as an advertisement in the feed may be a coincidence, that similar content may have been interacted with in the past, or a search on the subject may have been made.

NOT LISTENING, BUT ADVANCED DATA TRACKING

The main reason for the ads that users encounter is shown to be the complex data tracking methods developed by advertisers. Thanks to location data, browsed web history and tracking pixels, systems can predict with high accuracy the products users might consider purchasing. Algorithms can also link users to their circle of friends and bring the products searched by their close circle to other people.

In the research conducted by Northeastern University in 2019, where 17 thousand applications in Android stores were examined, no voice listening activity was found. However, it has been found that some small-scale applications share user screenshots and videos with third parties for their development processes, although not for advertising purposes.

WHAT SHOULD YOU DO TO PROTECT YOUR PERSONAL DATA?

Officials from the UK Ministry of Science, Innovation and Technology remind that applications can only access the equipment that users allow (camera, microphone, location, etc.), and make the following recommendations to protect digital privacy: