Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by HPsquared 282 days ago
Most people already have a phone, laptop, maybe a watch, maybe the TV remote.. And lots of apps on each one. Any one of which could be listening in. It's a crazy situation.
4 comments

I wish my phone was just listening. It’s actually much worse https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43799802
That thread's too old for me to reply, but for me this "eerie ad for what we just talked about" went away when I disabled "Ok Google" detection.
Android has a button in the quick settings bar to enable/disable the microphone, which helps with this (as long as you trust the OS itself). I keep it disabled most of the time.
At least the phones, at least theoretically, will ask first and/or show an indicator when they're recording.
I remember years ago, when viruses were common, watching kids use computers...

OK

Install

Accept

[X]

Upgrade

and they never want to clear their cookies and lose their logins.