I talked to my wife about playing euchre, the next day an ad for a euchre app popped up in my feed. which got me to this. https://www.cnet.com/...one-listening-to-me/

My guess is some app is listening just no one is admitting it.

Entirely possible. Phone has an always-on LTE connection and it's virtually impossible to know what's being sent across that connection.

One could disable LTE, connect to your own wifi, and then analyze the traffic on the network, for example at the router. One would need to be an IT engineer to do that, and even then it may be impossible because almost all cloud services use SSL/HTTPS encrypted traffic, so it is all cyphered on the wire. Only the destination address can be seen.

Best, perhaps only, solution, at least on tablets and smart phones, is to use the built-in web browser rather than to install apps.

This explains why 6 midgets and a donkey showed up at my house while I was supposed to be away...and my wife had no idea, yet was blushing...

Best, perhaps only, solution, at least on tablets and smart phones, is to use the built-in web browser rather than to install apps.

I'm not arguing with you, as I have no idea- but is there some reason to think the built in web browser is more secure than installed apps? Didn't Apple collect GPS data?

And if you're not going to use apps, what's the point of a smart phone? Maybe the best solution is to stick with a flip phone. (If this is important to you.)

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"People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don't realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world."

step by step
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9555403/capturing-mobile-phone-traffic-on-wireshark


I've used wireshark before and it's like reading the matrix but once you learn a few tricks it's pretty easy to use.

Yep wireshark is what we use. It is the premier tool for the job. There are others but wireshark is what everyone knows.

It is of no help whatsoever if the traffic is encrypted. And it is usually encrypted from the local client up to big corporate cloud servers like facebook's.

I'm not that interested. If "big brother" is listening to what I'm doing he is one bored MF-er.

That's what everyone says... right until they realize what a bad idea it is to have a self-surveillance device. But then it's too late.

What if hackers steal that info from facebook? Or a government simply buys it from facebook? Facebook sells all that info to anyone with money. That's literally their business model.

Here's a story for ya. WA state recently sent warning letters to all pet owners without a license. Over 40,000 people. Ummm how could they possibly know? They told us how. They bought grocery store loyalty card data from major grocery stores. Singled out people that regularly buy pet food. Removed from that list anyone with a license. Sent that letter to the rest.

I get the privacy implications etc... and largely agree. I'm just not that interested in chasing it down to understand what's doing it.

My guess is that it's not facebook, but Google. The wife wants to get google home but my first reaction to that is, I didn't want google listening to everything that goes on in the house.

Pics or it didn't happen. I'll show you mine if you show me yours. :) Well, I have to get back home to where mine sit in a frame before I can take any pictures - and that won't be for another 10 days.

My Android phone popped up a reminder in the morning to leave for the flight I was taking yesterday. All the flight arrangements were made using a non-gmail email account and directly through the Southwest website. There must be a lot of integration going on between Google and travel sites. Kind of freaked me out, but was also a nice reminder since the alert indicated there was traffic between my location and the airport.