Ever click on a random link and see it in your news feed immediately after? Facebook and Instagram have been doing that for a while now, but an experiment on YouTube was conducted after a couple thought their phone was listening to their conversations, even while offline. Watch the experiment of them talking about cat food and showing up on their newsfeed HERE.
Luckily, according to a recent study, your phone is not listening to you after all, but even a little creepier than that.
According to The Verge,
A group of computer science academics ran an experiment that tested over 17,000 of the most popular Android apps in order to determine if any of them recorded audio from the phone’s microphone. Some of these apps were Facebook’s own and over 8,000 other apps capable of sending information to the social media platform. Out of the set of apps tested, more than half had permissions to access the device’s camera and microphone, according to the report, which would allow for any conversations one had whilst having the app opened to potentially be recorded. Using an automated program as a method of interacting with the apps on the devices, all of the traffic created was analyzed and the researchers determined that no audio files were sent to any third-party domains.
But, the researchers did notice something else funky, according to Gizmodo. Several apps had taken video recordings and screenshots of what people were doing. These screenshots were then sent off to third-party domains.
So, our phones are WATCHING us?!?
Watch what you screenshot, kids. Read more from The Verge HERE.
