Recently, Cox Media Group (CMG) has reignited privacy concerns by boasting about their “Active Listening” program, which seems to imply that they can use smartphone microphones to capture real-time conversations, which can then be analysed alongside behavioural data to enhance ad targeting. This program has been linked to major clients, including Facebook, although Meta denied that they are listening in to people’s conversations through their smartphones.
This revelation again reignited debates about whether Facebook is listening in to conversations. We have a lot of anecdotal reports from people about seeing Facebook ads about a topic immediately after conversing about it, despite not having done anything about that topic prior to the conversation. The problem is that so far, no one has definitively proven that Facebook is listening to our conversations.
I have my theory of what is going on…
Today’s situation
Today, if Facebook is listening to our conversations, it is extremely easy to prove. The Android, iOS and macOS operating systems now have a feature that gives you an indicator if an app is using the microphone of your device.
This means anyone can easily conduct an experiment by ‘luring’ the Facebook app into listening in to a conversation and finding out if that tell-tale microphone indicator appears. If it appears, then this behaviour can be reproduced, recorded on video and posted on social media. That person will be famous for being the first guy on earth to prove conclusively that the Facebook app is indeed listening to conversations.
But no such video exists.
I guess it is because no one has succeeded in showing that.
What about the past?
But here is the question: Can the Facebook app secretly listen in to your conversations in the past?
Apple took action to disable eavesdropping
I found an article and read between the lines:
Major messaging app services that offer calls, such as Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, will have to make major changes to their code base to work properly in iOS 13, a report claims, due to fears from Apple that existing methods used by the apps could be used for data collection purposes.
Announced as part of a session on the background execution of apps during WWDC 2019, Apple is forcing apps that perform background processing when not in use to cut down on what they do, for the purposes of saving battery power and improving performance. Rather than keeping apps running, Apple instead wants to restrict the background processing as much as possible.
Take a read at the above quote that I highlighted in bold:
… existing methods used by the apps could be used for data collection purposes
Reading between the lines, you may ask what is exactly meant by “data collection purposes”. You and I know the answer to this question. 😉
What special powers did VOIP apps have?
Before iOS 13, there was a special class of iOS apps that were allowed to run persistently in the background: VOIP apps. VOIP apps are apps that provide telephony services through the Internet. Examples of VOIP apps include WhatsApp, Skype, Facebook Messenger, main Facebook app.
Therefore, prior to iOS 13, VOIP apps can still run in the background even when your phone is put to sleep. When running in the background, it can do anything it wants, including using the microphone.
In the Android platform, the ability of apps to run persistently in the background is always there. But in the latest Android versions, if a persistent background app uses excessive system resources, the operating system can notify the user and give him/her some options to deal with it.
When did the microphone indicator feature appear?
iOS’s microphone indicator feature only appeared in iOS 14, which was released in September 2020. The corresponding feature in Android only appeared in Android 12, which was released in October 2021.
What it means?
This means that prior to iOS 13, it is plausible that VOIP apps can listen in to your conversations all the time as long as your phone is switched on.
Also, prior to iOS 14 and Android 12, there is no way for you to be tipped off if an app is using the microphone secretly.
Did the plausible happen?
Further down in the article, I saw this interesting part:
Aside from power and performance, another reason Apple may be closing the function is due to the possibility of the background app collecting data about the user, something which may be seen as a privacy issue.
Again, reading between the lines, you and I know what the parts in bold mean. 😉
Going further,
The background processing for VoIP calls in relation to Facebook’s apps has been an issue for some time, with former Apple app review team chief Phillip Shoemaker noting Facebook’s splintering of Messenger into a standalone app in 2014 didn’t end Facebook’s use of the feature in the main social network app.
In other words, although Facebook Messenger was splintered from the main Facebook app in 2014, the main Facebook app was still using this background processing feature.
Going further,
“Messenger can still use [VoIP background] mode, and does,” Shoemaker said. “What they do in the background, whether it be accept calls, listen in all the time or update the content of the main app, it’s all unclear to Apple, but could be happening.“
In other words, Apple is not sure what Facebook Messenger was doing when running persistently in the background.
When is the date from which Facebook cannot listen in to your conversation?
According to the above-mentioned article, this is the magic date:
Developers have until April 2020 to make their apps comply with the requirements.
Since iOS 13 was released in September 2019, Apple gave VOIP apps several months to clean up their act.
For Android, if Facebook secretly uses the device’s microphone on Android 12 onwards, they will be caught.
My take
I think there may be some truth to the anecdotal observations that Facebook was listening to people’s conversations. But the ability to do so probably ended in April 2020 in the iOS platform. The ability to do it without detection ended in September 2020 for iOS and October 2021 for Android.
That is why you cannot find videos on social media proving that Facebook is listening to your conversations!
Therefore, I doubt this is still the current practice. But if anyone still has any slam-dunk anecdotal experiences of Facebook listening in to their conversations today, I will have to reconsider my opinion.
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