Facebook Could Be Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls (news10.com) 167
An anonymous reader writes: Facebook is not just looking at user's personal information, interests, and online habits but also to your private conversations, revealed a new report. According to NBC report, this may be the case as Kelli Burns, a professor at University of South Florida states, "I don't think that people realize how much Facebook is tracking every move we're making online. Anything that you're doing on your phone, Facebook is watching." the professor said. Now how do you prove that? Professor Kelli tested out her theory by enabling the microphone feature, and talked about her desire to go on a safari, informing about the mode of transport she would take. "I'm really interested in going on an African safari. I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps," she said aloud, phone in hand. The results were shocking, as less than 60 seconds later, the first post on her Facebook feed was about a safari story out of nowhere, which was then revealed that the story had been posted three hours earlier. And, after mentioning a jeep, a car ad also appeared on her page. On a support page, Facebook explains how this feature works: "No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update." I wonder how many people are actually aware of this.
off! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re: off! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop using the Facebook app!
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I've had a similar experience with Google. Having a conversation and then start typing a search based on that conversation in Google and with just a few letters typed, one of the suggestions is 100% on topic for the conversation I was having. This is typically on my desktop and I'm not running any Google offline apps (just hitting web pages).
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So... confirmation bias, [wikipedia.org] then.
Re: off! (Score:5, Funny)
I've had a similar experience with Google. Having a conversation and then start typing a search based on that conversation in Google and with just a few letters typed, one of the suggestions is 100% on topic for the conversation I was having. This is typically on my desktop and I'm not running any Google offline apps (just hitting web pages).
Google is even worse... they do mind reading. Often when I am only thinking of something and start typing it, autocomplete shows the exact thing I was thinking about! Get out of my head, Google! I can't even find a setting in Android to turn this mind reading feature off.
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I've noticed the same. I'm pretty sure it's not mind reading, though.
I do think the prediction system of Chrome takes into account what is topical. The scary part in those instances is probably more how unoriginal and how topically driven your thoughts are than that an algorithm is able to 'predict' them.
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Stop using Facebook!
FTFY
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Stop using the Internet!
FTFY
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This.
Closed my account almost a year ago and it was the greatest thing I have done in a LONG time.
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They still collect all the gossip about you and associate it with a shadow account made for you.
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Stop using the Facebook app!
Move out of the USA. It's only enabled for United States users :-)
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https://www.facebook.com/help/... [facebook.com]
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Facebook describes this very 'feature' right here.
https://www.facebook.com/help/... [facebook.com]
Well, kind of, but it seems misleading:
No, we don't record your conversations. If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update.
They say that it's only things you're listening to or watching, but how can they tell the difference between a private conversation between my wife and I, and what I'm watching on TV?
Don't use the FB app (Score:5, Insightful)
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well - yes - I too was shocked to learn this today. But apparently I already figured it out because the Microphone & Camera are disabled in the Settings.
The online description makes it sound like the iPhone Siri "Hey Siri - what music is playing now?" feature. Not really listening, rather identifying key words ( Shazam feature?!).
However, I have this (misplaced?) assumed privacy that Google and Apple only begin listening when I say "Okay Google" / "Hey Siri" and that all processing power is spent Only
Still useless for advertising (Score:2)
Re:Still useless for advertising (Score:5, Funny)
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"Oh, and honey, don't forget the condoms. Nooooo, you're not getting any! What? No, not you, sweety, I'm talking to Max, he's begging for doggy treats."
2 minutes later...
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Displaying an ad based on a word I say is the biggest waste of advertising money I can think of.
Actually, displaying an ad based on a word you say is the holy grail for advertisers.
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Displaying an ad based on a word I say is the biggest waste of advertising money I can think of.
Actually, displaying an ad based on a word you say is the holy grail for advertisers.
Turn the feature on while watching Deadpool. Not sure what ads you'll get but messing with their metrics sounds like fun.
Nothing short of Disturbing (Score:3)
Re:Nothing short of Disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
If you give your privacy away, just so you can post status updates about your life, you're not really concerned about privacy, are you?
In other words, most people could not care any less about "privacy" since they are practically posting their daily lives on facebook. The problem is, those people are dragging the rest of us down along side them.
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Depends, do you live in Canada? If so, then you're protected under different privacy laws. This is likely illegal here if they're using it here.
On the other hand, dealing with the whole range of idiots out there from anti-privacy advocates to pro-authoritarian and anti-speech nuts seems to be a growing problem these days.
Re:Nothing short of Disturbing (Score:5, Insightful)
There are reasonable expectations and there are unreasonable expectations. Users may be guilty of being naive and giving an inch, but Facebook has taken that inch and run 10 miles down Big Brother Blvd. all the way out to Creepytown. So yes, users have some role, but it's no more than 10%, and a whole lot less in my opinion.
I suspect that in your haste you forgot to mention that you have deleted your Facebook account, and furthermore don't even own a TV. :^)
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What is reasonable expectation? When people assume something, they are to blame for their assumptions, and nobody else. It is victim blaming, because instead of taking an active role in deciding how to live their lives, they have chosen to go the Zombie route and not think at all, because that is much too hard. Why blame Facebook for doing what Facebook wants to do, to provide a better experience to their customers (Advertisers)?
When you are the product, you have no rights. After all, you have a choice of b
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What is reasonable expectation?
That's really the crux of the issue, isn't it? I don't think that people are stupid or uncaring just because they want to enjoy, or are seduced by, the benefits of Facebook's front door, and don't fully appreciate what they are giving up on the back door. This is a "feature" that no doubt was snuck in and pushed out via automatic update without user any the wiser, and the documentation is online but not in a place where a casual user would find it.
Jaded veterans like you and me are not surprised by this
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So, you are saying that we can victim blame 10% of the time then?
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There are reasonable expectations and there are unreasonable expectations. Users may be guilty of being naive and giving an inch, but Facebook has taken that inch and run 10 miles down Big Brother Blvd.
Facebook has been openly running full tilt down Big Brother Blvd. from day 1. It's the people who think that Facebook doesn't actively fight against your privacy who have the unreasonable expectations.
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If I choose to post about my life that's one thing. That doesn't mean I want FB to eavesdrop in my living room. Disclaimer: I do very little posting on FB, just because most of the crap I'd be willing to share would bore anyone else to sleep.
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When you post about your life, to Facebook, and Facebook wants to eavesdrop on your living-room, you have the choice, to not post anything. That is the choice. Stop pretending that someone is holding a gun to your head, making you post on Facebook.
My suggestion is, don't post to Facebook. Don't post online at all.
As an aside, you should watch the TV Show "Person of Interest" (syndication/netflix, last season on air), as it really exposes how things really are. Yes, it is a tad Sci-Fi, but the concepts are a
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The sad thing is, this sort of thing has become the norm. A while ago, I stumbled on a feature in the Google Maps app on my Android phone, whereby it had a record/track-log of everywhere I've been.
My first thought was "hmm..that's interesting", rather than "err..that's creepy" - like I'm almost expecting apps to be snaffling my data
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Make it the default setting and not the other way around.
I think there should be a physical switch to microphone and camera attachments on all products which carry them as integrated features, as a matter of law.
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Considering a mic is needed for phone calls, I'm not sure how practical that would be
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Considering that making or receiving calls if what a phone is, you know, actually *FOR*... again, I'm not sure that it is terribly practical. Sure, if all you use your phone for is texting then it probably would be fine for that use-case, but if you have any amount of voice calls to manage, all it does is create an extra step that would be seen as nothing more than making a mute setting the default, and the switch would just get left on.
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That's the good part about making it a switch: people who often use their phones as actual phones can just leave it on. But a substantial portion of the population (especially the younger set) almost never make voice phone calls. It's so rare, that when they get a voice call, they automatically assume that there's an emergency.
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You have stated the obvious, now what?
"Why, there oughtta be a law!"
"Someone do something!"
Did you have a next step in mind, like figuring out who cares and whether they can be mobilized? Because this is opt in, as in use Facebook or don't.
I miss a lot of stuff, because people don't talk about most Facebook stuff, because everyone else read the post. It's worth missing out to me, but not most people. Their argument is that this thing, which is necessary, shouldn't do certain things, as if using Facebook is
First step - teach the next generation (Score:2)
First step - teach the next generation.
I'm raising a daughter, who at 6 knew what privacy is, what is and is not reasonable for other people to know about her, etc.
We rolled it into stranger awareness, because it makes sense to group social engineering awareness, stranger awareness and privacy issues together in my opinion. Only issue we have is occasionally she got upset because her teacher used her last name in class, but that's easier to correct for.
Seriously, every time we course-correct society succes
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Setting up a new ISP, router, and using IPv6 for the first time, pasted in one IPv6 number hoping it was the router address, it was my IP address - Google picked it up and showed all of my /. post as the only hit.
It was disturbing in a way, but did show how good search engines have gotten.
Seriously? (Score:5, Informative)
If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update
Did the person who wrote this actually read what they wrote? If they're identifying what users are listening to and matching them to something else, then that's still a record, even if it's not an audio recording.
I gave up the Facebook app years ago. m.facebook.com gives all the functionality I need; I don't even miss it...and it takes far less data than the app.
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I never met a data I didn't like.
What did you say? (Score:2)
The site, itself, admits in an online statement, “We use your microphone to identify the things you’re listening to or watching, based on the music and TV matches we’re able to identify.” But, experts contend that the site is going a step further. In what some users are calling an alarming trend, described as “Big Brother,”
Do we need anymore proof?
This is unconscionable.
Could be? Or is? (Score:2, Flamebait)
Facebook Could Be Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls
Facebook is not just looking at [...] your private conversations
Dodgy grammar aside, they either could be or they are. Which is it? If you sure enough to state it as fact in the summary, why not do so in the headline?
revealed a new report.
Reveals. It's news, not olds!
According to NBC report, this maybe
May. Be. Two words.
the case as Kelli Burns a professor at University of South Florida states
Take a breath!
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"Reveals. It's news, not olds!"
Wrong. News is what happened, or is happening. I don't care what your community college degree says, that's not how people communicate.
It causes other issues too - (Score:5, Interesting)
I got my wife one of those $50 Amazon tablets recently. Removing the Facebook app increased her battery life by close to 60%. A significant part of the reason I paid the money for the Sunshine crack to own my Android phone was to get the Facebook app off my phone all together. The storage space it doesn't deserve, the battery life and bandwidth it hogs, not to mention the spying is way more trouble than Facebook is worth.
Sure, now I still have to deal with the Google and Amazon spying, but one bridge at a time.
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I bought a Jolla phone - no native Google or Facebook app, no eavesdropping :)
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If I could afford one, I'd have ordered it - would definitely have been awesome to have a keyboard option, but stores positively hate them due to higher return-rates and lower profit.
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I got my wife one of those $50 Amazon tablets recently. Removing the Facebook app increased her battery life by close to 60%.
Along those same lines - I quit Facebook a couple years ago and found my available free time increased by close to 60%!
Missing details (Score:2)
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"Needs to be turned off"? How can you be sure it's turned off? Facebook has been known to flip settings from private to public without either asking permission or notifying you.
The only way to be secure from it is to avoid it. Even then you aren't secure against indirect links via third parties.
Hear about that new Facebook keyword features? (Score:5, Funny)
It's the bomb.
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How about "pressure cooker".
Isn't this obvious? (Score:2)
Translation (Score:5, Insightful)
"Facebook Could Be Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls"
Translation:
"Facebook Is Eavesdropping On Your Phone Calls"
After all of the egregious privacy abuses by Facebook that have already been uncovered, why this would surprise anyone is beyond me. OF COURSE they're eavesdropping on your conversations, you idiots. You should have assumed this a long time ago.
What do you mean 'could be'? (Score:2)
If you are using Facebook at all, then 100% of everything you do, everything you post, every mouse click, every sound you make, is being surveilled, stored, processed, evaluated, monetized, sent or sold off to 'partner' companies, and likely being sent wholesale to one or more government agencies. If you believe otherwise then you are tragically naive.
WHY ARE YOU STILL USING FACEBOOK???
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What's the alternative?
Let's take three people, Mrs. Smith, Mrs. Jones and Mrs. Brown. They want to share pictures of cakes, share lighthearted gossip about Mrs. X's wedding, see pictures of other peoples cakes. Then you come in and make a reasoned case against Facebook, it doesn't matter what that case is: let's assume that you convinced all three, at once, to never touch Facebook again save to inform their contacts that they're leaving. They delete whatever accounts they can, and trust FB (wisely or not)
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Your theoretical kaffeeklatsch can use email, like everyone used to, and have a greater degree of privacy than Failbook (although not perfect).
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You want them to email large images to each other?
That's a lot of bandwidth and storage, and you're not getting facilities like auto-resizing for smaller devices.
And how is that going to scale when you've got groups of people in the three digits?
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I'm posting this as another message, as it's a more constructive idea even though I think it's a bit silly:
You've hit upon something. Let's say e-mail is the solution. But folks won't like the lack of the features they've become used to on Facebook: the timeline constructed from other folks status updates, the picture gallery cascade, videos, links, discovering new groups, the real time chat, simple urls.
Then... is the solution to write a wrapper over e-mail that presents a Facebook-like interface?
Folks don
Re:What do you mean 'could be'? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Do they maintain it themselves, applying patches and whatnot?
Is there enough storage, bandwidth and processor time for them all?
And they're willing to pay for the hosting?
If so, bravo.
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Now, Smith, Jones and Brown all turn to you and say 'Alright, no Facebook, no FB app, it's all gone. Where do I go to do all the stuff that I would have done on Facebook? Real time chat, picture hosting, messaging, silly stuff, groups. It's not the 90s so we're not using "Yahoo!" but what do we do now?'
What do you suggest to them?
Forums. Email. Texts. iMessage.
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There are tons of alternative to Facebook for doing this. Email would work fine (that's what most of the people in my family do), but so would setting up one of the cheap and easy websites such as Wordpress.
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Convenience goes a long way. Hell, convenience is the entire way.
Social media services don't do anything by themselves except make things more convenient. (Be they posting pictures of birthday cakes or shooting yourself in the foot.)
That explains the strange ads... (Score:2)
A friend complained about his new coat having all sorts of shit dangling from it and I suggested he should use a wire cutter to cut all those dangling bits.
You do NOT want to know what kind of shit I had to see not a minute later!!!
Hakuna matata (Score:2)
So what? It only uses the voice data to show specific advertisements. This does not differ from the way that Facebook has used text data since the beginning.
I know that this is kind of politically incorrect to say in Slashdot (and that's what makes saying it fun), but I claim that the benefits of Facebook still outweigh its drawbacks. My life is too short to ponder about some datamining. My data goes only through the advertisement engine and is not read by humans.
The real danger is that if NSA has a hotline
Not just Facebook (Score:5, Interesting)
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A piece of plastic doesn't stop them listening to your calls if you've given permission. Still everything you NEED to say and have your phone hear (i.e. the content of every conversation) will be accessible to apps with those permissions.
The trick is: Don't use those apps that have those permissions. Why does Facebook EVER need your mic? And why is Facebook running except for when you're in the Facebook app itself? Don't allocate those permissions (we really need a third option "Allow, Deny, Emulate" s
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And it's not at all difficult for manufacturers or even Google to put in a widget on the lock screen that shows WHAT features are being used by what apps. Facebook - little mic symbol, little camera symbol, for instance. And then you KNOW what it's doing.
That would be a great feature actually.
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To be fair, installing a connected app and denying it ""Internet connectivity" doesn't make for a very useful app.
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Because it has the ability to send an audio recording. Kinda hard to record audio if the mic doesn't work.
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I would prefer a setting that instead of blanket deny would give apps appearance that the right has been granted, and then spoof the feed with something else.
The basic options for this is of course things like mute for audio, or missing signal from GPS. But the fun would be if you would make Facebook only hear "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" 24/7...
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I was kinda surprised at how many wanted access to the microphone and camera (that weren't sound or camera apps).
Not to mention other sketchy things like access to your address book. My solution to this problem is very simple: if an app is asking for permissions when there is no clear reason for it to be, I don't use the app.
"Apps" on phones (Score:2)
So-called "smart" so-called "telephones" (Score:2)
Anyone who gets duped into buying a computer they cannot control, running programs they cannot inspect, and trusting people and companies who long ago proved themselves to be untrustworthy, and is willing to pay for the privilege of buying and operating it, simply because the gadget is called a "telephone" and not a telescreen or spy computer, should expect such treatment.
I am amazed at how many free software advocates have given in to peer pressure and bought one of those insidious devices. Aren't you tak
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I use a smartphone, and retain nearly as much control over it as I have over my desktop. I had to put a little work into it, such as rooting it, installing a firewall, etc., but it certainly can be done.
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"Challenged Accepted", said Windows 10
PR Fail (Score:2)
So their response to "I'm worried you may be monitoring my calls" is "Oh don't worry about that, we monitor you even when you aren't making calls"?
Come at me, bro, er, sis (Score:2)
"I was wondering what it would be like to hire a prostitute."
Could be? (Score:2)
Install a Framework like XPrivacy and have a look, if it actually does. No rumors, facts!
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I am constantly more and more happy with my decision to tell this company to eff off and refuse to use their products at any level.
Except you probably still do. There have been numerous reports of any page with a like button creating an 'anonymous' user hash for the sole purpose of tracking people that are not signed in to facebook (or don't have the login cookie). Once you create an account or sign in, that user hash is then associated with your account.
Basically, Facebook knows a lot about you even without your expressed consent by signing in.
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facebook.com in all its incarnations in the hosts file, a "like button" blocker plugin in the browser...
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There have been numerous reports of any page with a like button creating an 'anonymous' user hash for the sole purpose of tracking people that are not signed in to facebook (or don't have the login cookie).
Yep, which is why I block all access to Facebook servers, and block all javascript by default.
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Ok, now it gets interesting, if there's as much as an indication that this could maybe, possibly have anything to do with what could commonly be called with some veracity "the truth", I'd like to see it!
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It would have to ask for permission. Did you get such an popup? I did never.
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No.
People know, and are concerned, but they use social media anyway.
We all get inundated with articles like this at least once a week.
We know.
It just doesn't matter enough.
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What the fuck do you mean you don't use social media.
What the fuck do you think slashdot is?
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Anti-social media?
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If Slashdot counts as "social media", then the term has pretty much lost all useful meaning.
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, which is as much of an intrusion as a guy walking into an open store to buy something and being overheard by the sales clerk.
Yup, because when I walk into the grocery store, talking about video cards, and the clerk overhears me he quickly jots down my name, and what i was talking about and then support staff scurry about the store erecting signs for video cards next to the peaches, bread, and frozen yogurt aisles.
Wait... no... that never happens. So maybe some random clerk overhearing me at the store; where 99% of the time it goes in one ear and out the next and the company as a whole never acts on it at all is actually ENTIRELY
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which is as much of an intrusion as a guy walking into an open store to buy something and being overheard by the sales clerk.
No. It's a much greater intrusion than that. When someone overhears what you say in public, they aren't writing it down, noting various mathematical characteristics of it, and storing everything in the database of a multinational corporation.
Or not usually. We have a word for the people who actually do this: spies.
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"So, Bob, you have that federal warrant for wiretapping ready to serve? Will we have support from the US marshals on this raid? How about the Menlo Park police department? It sure would be fun if Zuckerberg was in the office and we could grab him today."
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Duh. Father and son are facebook friends and known as father and son. They went on fishing weekends and either talked about it (in fb IM!) or were geolocated at the lake in the same 20 hours or took a few pictures or..., maybe all of that.