Isaac Berkower - Week 6 - Does your phone really listen to you?

After getting the new ios update a few weeks ago, I noticed that the orange dot on the top of the screen that indicates whether an app is accessing your microphone popped up very often. I didn't think anything of it because it usually popped up on apps that had features that need the microphone. But then, I decided to do a little bit of "investigating" and downloaded Instagram, and Facebook, to see if those two apps were constantly using your microphone. I chose those two apps because it is a common complaint of people that the app places ads based on listening to the conversations people have, so I wanted to see if that was true. After downloading both apps, I saw that the apps didn't secretly use my microphone, but I was able to find videos on YouTube that showed the app using the microphone while people were just scrolling through their feed. These videos obviously could be faked in many ways, but I do think it's possible that Instagram and Facebook originally listened to people's conversations and all of a sudden stopped because of the new feature on the iPhone. I am curious about whether or not people still feel that their phones cater ads to their conversations or if they stopped feeling that way because these apps potentially stopped listening to them.

Do you guys think that your phone is listening to you, or do you feel that it was listening to you and recently stopped? Let me know.

https://www.pandasecurity.com/mediacenter/privacy/is-instagram-listening-conversations/