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News Apple refreshes MacBook Pro family

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by bit-tech, 13 Jul 2018.

  1. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    The latest Skeptics with a K podcast discusses a study by security researchers on this very topic (00:57:43 to 01:29:42). Although it's a fairly large and well designed study it does have its limitations, but the TL;DR is that, based on this evidence, it's very unlikely that your smartphone is covertly listening to you. More alarmingly however some apps may be recording your screen without you knowing it...
     
  2. Gareth Halfacree

    Gareth Halfacree WIIGII! Lover of bit-tech Administrator Super Moderator Moderator

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    And sometimes, just sometimes, it really is listening to what you're doing via the microphone.
     
  3. Byron C

    Byron C Multimodder

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    Hence why I said "based on this study" :thumb:. That app probably wouldn't have met the inclusion criteria for the study in the first place, and even if it did the conditions to activate the mic in the app wouldn't have been met.

    The short answer is still the same: your phone probably isn't listening to you in order to feed that data to advertisers. But well worth having a listen to that segment though (and the rest of the podcast if you're so inclined :))
     
  4. RedFlames

    RedFlames ...is not a Belgian football team

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  5. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    Yeah, 9to5mac has more written snippets about the testing. Instant classics such as:

    Or:

     
  6. perplekks45

    perplekks45 LIKE AN ANIMAL!

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    Well... that was surprisingly fast.

     
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