Smartphones used for calling, video calling, taking photos and much more, but also as a method of espionage by marketing professionals to better target you with various targeted advertisements. This event happens quite often and NordVPN conducted a survey to demonstrate how this fact should be known by users. The same study shows that during 2021 there was a 5% increase towards installations of various monitoring apps. A clear sign that the population doubts, but does not really know where to turn.
“When tomorrow to Google Assistant or Siri to search for something, this information is used for online advertising. It’s no different than typing something into the Google search bar. If you are looking for car dealerships in your city, you will start seeing related advertisements more and more on the web. In a sense, a virtual assistant is just another search engine “ stated on the subject Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN.
Smartphone: what to do to understand that it is spying on you?
Not only search engines within your smartphone, but also virtual assistants like Siri, Google Assistant or Alexa they are part of the espionage circle to help the quality of the service or to improve targeted marketing advertisements on the device. But how does this phenomenon work? Well, very often the voices of the people who are speaking or simply are recorded the words written on the search bar are recorded and that’s it.
Would you like to be 100% sure that your smartphone is spying on you? There is a small and simple test which will allow you to find out. You will have to follow the various directions to the letter and you can try it whenever you want. I advise you to save the article through our free application, so that you are always available and close at hand. Let’s begin:
- Select a good topic: it should be something unrelated to your personality, something you never talk about;
- Isolate the topic from your phone: do not use your phone or any other device to search for information on this topic, also make sure you have never searched for this topic on Google;
- Select keywords: think of a list of keywords that could activate search engines (example: “I would love to go and see my cousin who works in a car dealership”, the keywords could be car or dealer);
- Talk about the topic out loud next to your phone – you can do it alone or in company for several minutes at a time, do it for a few days straight, and make sure you don’t search for keywords in any other way.
Is all this to be considered legal?
The smartphone will fall into the trap, if of course he will be close enough to hear you, and from here on you will have to notice every single change through social media or other platforms where various advertisements are shown. If you start seeing ads related to what you said, it means that your smartphone listens to you and, as a result, he’s spying on you. All this, however, is perfectly legal and there is a more than plausible explanation.
When using various virtual assistants, for example, you accept the terms and conditions of the service provider. And here’s the main reason why your smartphone can legally spy on you! There are, however, some applications that do not require any kind of authorization, activating various spying for marketing purposes. In that case it is to be considered completely illegal!
“When granted access, the app can do whatever it wants with that data. Therefore, establish a routine to review the permissions of the apps installed on your phone and think carefully before accepting requests from an application “ continued in his statement Daniel Markuson, digital privacy expert at NordVPN.
How to protect yourself from this espionage?
Another example of sneaky espionage is that referring to apps that ask for permission to access your microphone for no reason. This could be great access for marketing companies; to avoid this, therefore, you will simply have to go to the settings of your smartphone and make sure you have entered the permissions correctlyso those apps can only access the resources they need for what they need to do.
Every now and then, however, you will need to clear your activities or disable the audio recording functionespecially if you regularly use voice assistants. Apple and Googlefor example, they own a dictation history clearing function and this will allow greater protection of privacy. In addition to the above, you may think of install a VPN (like NordVPNfor instance)to improve privacy within your smartphone.
“Don’t share too much information with your phone. The less you know, the better “ concludes Daniel Markuson.
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