Last week’s article on whether someone is listening to our mobile phone conversation received a lot of attention. Almost everyone I meet confesses their experience on the same concern. Briefly, people experience personalised advertisements and promotions displayed on their smartphone after private and personal conversations.
Questions were raised whether these mobile phones were listening to conversations (both while in or off calls). Heavyweight tech giants, Apple and Google, both denied secretly listening and/or recording their users’ conversations.
Nevertheless, they all admitted that the Artificial Intelligence Powered apps (e.g., Siri for Apple, Google Assistant for Androids) do have access to smart device microphones (proof in the pudding).
Furthermore, users often do not check on the kind of privacy policies/options they grant when installing apps onto their devices. This is scary, annoying, and indeed a concern for everyone. My article today will focus on steps one can follow to protect oneself from a mobile phone listening in on their conversation.
Before I share the steps, let me list some of the things that our smart devices can expose. Your voice (via microphone), video (via camera), pictures (via app gallery), locations (via GPS receiver), and your movement/senses (via sensors). What you see, talk, share, and tomorrow even feel or smell can be exposed, no thanks to smart technologies and the embedded sensors around the devices we use.
You discuss a vacation with your wife; you get an ad displayed on your smartphone about the various options and offers in the market. You take snaps of your pet at home, and you get an ad about accessories you can buy for your pets.
Places you visit or go to, and suddenly get promotions of places close by. You smell a particular food tomorrow; you get an ad about restaurants, their locations, and discounts offered too. You get the idea; there is practically no privacy in what you do, go, or say.
So how can you protect yourself? First, seeing is believing, and I trust, knowing is believing too. By realizing that your smart device may be monitored, you would look and take the necessary steps to find out ways to protect yourself (such as reading this article per se). Do you get targeted and personalized ads? Does your mobile phone or tablet battery get drained fast?
Do apps you use crash out of the blue? All these are signs that your smart devices may be infected. What to do? Check app permissions to see what kind of things you allow them to access, i.e., microphone, camera, locations, gallery, etc. Disable any app that you feel doesn’t require those access (disabling can be done via the settings - app permissions of the designated mobile operating system).
Next, install a trusted security app (e.g., Malwarebytes, McAfee, or Norton Mobile Security) to scan and detect spyware and unauthorized access of apps on your phones.
What more? Ensure you update the operating system of your phone regularly (whenever you get a notification).
This will ensure bugs and vulnerabilities are fixed. Lastly, back up your data regularly, be it on the cloud via a respected and trusted service provider or on your local drive (something I recommend for total privacy).
To conclude my article this week, I would like to note that protecting your personal data in today’s AI-driven and hyper-connected world is becoming difficult. Safeguarding requires vigilance.
I can tell you with confidence that this concern will continue to grow and may probably become a norm in our lives. I once said at one of the presentations I delivered for a cybersecurity conference that “privacy will no longer be a word in a dictionary.” This is becoming a reality as we progress every day. I hope the steps I shared in this article today will help protect and keep you safe meanwhile. Until we catch up again next week, keep your eyes open and stay safe.
So how can you protect yourself? First, seeing is believing and I trust, knowing is believing too. By realising that your smart device may be monitored, you would look and take the necessary steps to find out ways to protect yourself (such as reading this article per se).
The writer is the founder of Knowledge Oman
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