TheSamba.com :: View topic - Does Your Telephone Listen and Report About You?

Fri Mar 07, 2025 8:32 am

I use an old pay-as-you-go service with a flip-phone and a home land line. The flip-phone is mainly for emergencies. That's about as minimal as I can get. But that's not much. You have to also factor in all the people with their smart-devices around you.

As for being on line with my laptop, I will NEVER respond to any unsolicited advertisements, recommendations or suggestions no matter how appealing.

It's getting harder and harder to be anonymous in an old paper-world. I just assume everyone is listening all the time. From my TV to my toaster, they're probably listening right now. :D

Yes, I've often noticed the advertising 'coincidence'.

Fri Mar 07, 2025 8:38 am

I have a so-called "Kosher" phone, which is a minimalistic flip phone that does little more than calls and texts. It STILL spies on me, even without having a web browser, because as soon as I'm done saying something I see some video for that on youtube.

Also, all the cameras may be doing eye tracking technology, and if I recall correctly, your eyes move depending on what part of your cognitive web (see word associations) you are accessing. Is it possible that computers are now "reading" our minds through eye tracking and years of studying us as we talk?

Fri Mar 07, 2025 8:45 am

And to think that we once thought telemarketers were annoying many times, specially around dinner time. Have we ever gone a long way.

Fri Mar 07, 2025 8:59 am

If I had time I'd answer but Secret Service is knocking at the door.

Fri Mar 07, 2025 9:04 am

kingkarmann wrote: If I had time I'd answer but Secret Service is knocking at the door.

Nice of them to knock, I usually just get no-knock warrants

Fri Mar 07, 2025 9:46 am

every once in a while I'll yell Allahu Akbar at Alexa. Drives my wife nuts, but so far we haven't been bothered

Fri Mar 07, 2025 10:04 am

I occasionally ask Alexa to "launch the nuclear weapons" or "strike that last sentence from the record" at the office and Alexa replies "I don't understand your request". However, I seem to see a few black sedans with tinted windows following me around lately but it's probably just the CRA.....:)

Fri Mar 07, 2025 10:56 am

skills@eurocarsplus wrote: every once in a while I'll yell Allahu Akbar at Alexa. Drives my wife nuts, but so far we haven't been bothered

I did get a friend of mine's Alexa "trained" to call a mutual friend of ours "Jim the asshole". Thats my high point with Alexa.

After the issue thet was in the news a few years back of the Alexa and other attendent systems listening and learning from neighbor systems...I decided to never have one.

The real problem as several have mentioned a page back is not really so much that the phone COMPANY is listening...it really is two things:

1. The apps you have in your phone.
There are only two apps in my phone that I have actually downloaded. The other 100+ are in the phone, came with it and are almost impossible to get out (bloatware). I have to judicously go through after every update and force most of them off or closed because the updates turn EVERYTHING back on. This happens both with I-phones and Android.

And, you notice when you turn off apps that the warning comes up "may cause other apps and functions to stop" (or something like that).

The problem they are getting at is that even when you turn certain apps off, they have been intertwined as part of the operating system for certain functions and when you use those functions (might be the camera, might be the recorder, might be the file storage system)...it turns those apps back on instantly.

The.... APPS....all have their OWN apps :wink: .

For instance, if you have a banking app, its keyed to bank location and GPS even if you have your phone GPS turned off. You go to a bank or use an ATM....the bank and the ATM are radiating location data and interrogating anything closeby. Five minutes later you are seeing Bank of America adds in your Facebook feed.

Grocery stores have them and radiate, car dealers, hospitals...you name it.

2. The cell tower network has been co-opted for YEARS. I travel the country on business. Much of it I drive for various reasons at different times.

Many times I have been driving and may pass through 3-4 states in one day. I pass through maybe a dozen area codes right?

I am yakking on the phone to clients and friends on bluetooth the whole way. And....you got people lifting your number and location right off the cell tower network even without GPS activated. It just tracks you from cell to cell.

So I get home and for about five days afterwards, I am getting robo-calls all day long from area codes that look just like a road map of the exact interstate path I drove. This is either cell companies selling this access or telemarketing STEALING this access.

So...how easy is it to steal access to what is being bounced around between cell towers? I think its pretty easy.

Last story and I will shut up....

So back in about 2006....I was driving from Baton Rouge back to Houston in teh middle of the night on that crazy long section of I-10 elevated over the swamps. Absolutely nothing out there and no place to stop so you better have gas, oil, a spare tire and food when you travel that road. There are only two exits....one of them for Whiskey bay inlet.

So, at that Whiskey bay exit there is a little gas station, with a trailer house with year round christmas lights open 24-7. I was planning to stop there. This is like midnight. Its about 45*F outside...chilly night

As I am coming up on the exit....On the side of the road looking over the store and parking lot is a black SUV and a black crown-vic....blacked out glass....idling...lights off.....vapor coming out the exhaust. No license plates....Ok...odd.

Pull down to the pump and start pumping gas. About 50 feet away is a cell tower. Parked at the base of it is a white Chevy Cavalier...dome light on inside...guy hunched over a laptop. He reaches over in the seat next to him and picks up a mushroom shaped thing wit ha wire and slaps it on the roof. Wave with his left hand at the two black cars parked up the hill on the ramp. Turns off his dome light.

I go in to pay and get a bottle of water and ask the cashier what the hell that is about. He shakes his head and whispers.... "DEA...reading cell tower to get catch people smuggling drugs. They are out here about twice a week...and I wouldn't ask too many questions"
.
So yeah....I am betting a decade and a half down the line....I could snatch things off the cell network with something that fits in a cigarette pack by now.

Sorry for the length

Ray

Mon Mar 10, 2025 2:46 am

We have a land line and cell phones. I would love to drop one or the other but neither one are dependable. It takes up to a month to get land line problems addressed, the connection boxes on the roadsides are bent over, covers off and rotting in the weather because they laid off the service staff years ago. My cousin was one of them and I know several others. It takes 8 months or more to get a land line into a new house.

Cell service is horrible! We only have perhaps 50% coverage in this area and it seems to change depending on the weather (I can't see what else it could be) so sometimes you can get a connection and sometimes not. The cell phone works in the kitchen, not in the living room, sometimes in the garage but not in the hay shed or barn. It works where we park the cars but is dead for the 1/2 mile south to the highway where we get full bars! Go north and... good luck finding any service for several miles!

This is on the flat prairie where for the most part you can see the back of your head if you look hard and long enough!

The problem it seems is that there is a monopoly on the infrastructure. Sure you can change service providers but one company owns both the land lines and the cell towers.

Mon Mar 10, 2025 8:15 am

For "home phone" I use Ooma through the Internet. One pays for the box, and after that costs about $5 US per month, and uses your existing home phone unit, even if cordless.

Mon Mar 10, 2025 8:20 am

My phone used to listen in on me, but I'm so boring all I hear is the faint sound of snoring on the other end.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 9:10 am

Happened again. Yesterday I call my garbage company to request the free gallon jugs they give out for me to place used motor oil in for pick up. This on my cell telephone. Today I am getting YouTube ads for motor oil recycling. Never seen that ad before. I did zero searches on the web for this subject, only a telephone call to the garbage company general phone number it is not a dedicated telephone number for oil recycle.

Dam!!!!! The fucking thing is listening.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 9:39 am

That, or the garbage company sells their information on you and your usages/purchases to third parties.

That permission is buried in almost every agreement you accept either online or by subscribing to a service.

They call it by a euphemism, "improving the customer experience."

Wed Mar 12, 2025 9:39 am

Time to dump it for an old flip phone.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 10:04 am

just as soon as l can no longer work as a mechanic, my phone is going in the trash.
Glenn wrote: Time to dump it for an old flip phone.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 11:43 am

markswagen wrote: just as soon as l can no longer work as a mechanic, my phone is going in the trash.
Glenn wrote: Time to dump it for an old flip phone.
I said that when I retired from IT, 7 years ago.

Sorry, but the genie is never going back into the bottle.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:04 pm

l'm not like most folk out there, l hate having to carry a phone.
when l'm not working it sits in a drawer and goes flat, l hate hate hate it.
and it will 100% go.
l only got one because l needed it for my business.
my first one l got in 2003, that one got dumped in 2009.
early 2014 l got another, when l started my business.
when l'm done, it'll be done.
it amazes me that folk can't do anything without them.
mine only talks to people, sends sms messages, and takes pictures.
no online stuff, this is done on my laptop, no online bank or facebollocks, or email, NOTHING.
the doctors want this mychart nonsense on my phone, nope, that's not happening either.

unfortunately my number is everywhere, because it has to be, l get 20 to 30 scammers, wasters a day, EVERY day.
scammers now are able to leave messages, so l closed my answer phone thing, l hate hate hate it, all of it

Glenn wrote: markswagen wrote: just as soon as l can no longer work as a mechanic, my phone is going in the trash.
Glenn wrote: Time to dump it for an old flip phone.
I said that when I retired from IT, 7 years ago.

Sorry, but the genie is never going back into the bottle.

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:19 pm

I sure miss my Bag-phone. :cry:

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:31 pm

Forget your phone, do you have a smart device in your home?

One in the bedroom?

And IOT devices such as cameras, thermostats, doorbells, lights.. etc.?

Wed Mar 12, 2025 12:43 pm

No smart appliances in this house, wood stove for heat, plenty of backup arsenal for the zombies, spring fed water source, backup generator, only use the Internet for the Samba.