The listening device in your pocket
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 5 April 2019
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Does the proliferation of microphones in our mobile phones and home smart speakers mean that anyone can eavesdrop on us?
Manuela Saragosa hears from the BBC's own technology correspondent Zoe Kleinman about a creepy experience she had when her phone appeared to listen in on a conversation with her mother, and how it led her to discover how easy it is to hack someone's microphone and spy on them.
That's exactly what Dutch documentary film maker Anthony van der Meer did, when he purposely let his phone get stolen so he could use it secretly to record the thief. Cyber-security expert Lisa Forte says these stories may be the tip of the iceberg, with everyone from governments to big tech firms to hackers and cyber-criminals potentially listening in on our private conversations.
Producer: Laurence Knight
(Picture: Outline of a mobile phone visible in the back pocket of a woman's jeans; Credit: Yuri Arcurs/Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello and welcome to Business Daily from the BBC. I'm Manuel Saragossa. Coming up, do you ever feel like your phone or tablet is listening in on you? |
| 0:11.0 | Having microphones on in order to activate voice control is becoming the norm. We have let these devices into our lives and they are listening for command words to activate them. |
| 0:21.9 | We're talking privacy at a time when more and more of us are buying and using devices with |
| 0:27.1 | built-in microphones. A British former police cybercrime expert gives us her advice. |
| 0:33.2 | If I'm having a very sensitive conversation, I'll put the phone in the microwave. |
| 0:36.7 | And if I really want to be secure, I'll turn that microwave on for 30 seconds and it will |
| 0:40.5 | be finished forever. |
| 0:41.5 | Well, it would blow up your phone, wouldn't it? |
| 0:43.0 | It would blow up your phone, you will be very secure. |
| 0:45.1 | She was just joking, but her concerns about audio privacy are real. |
| 0:49.7 | That's all here in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 0:55.9 | This week, it was revealed that a digital platform based in Mexico City |
| 1:00.3 | stored 540 million records on Facebook users on a publicly accessible database. |
| 1:07.4 | The information included identification numbers, comments, reactions and account names. |
| 1:12.9 | Anyone who found the details online could download them. |
| 1:16.5 | So if that's happening to information we type into platforms online, what's happening to the |
| 1:21.7 | information collected online via microphones on our devices? |
| 1:25.8 | On Monday, we looked at the big jump in the use of voice-activated digital assistants like Siri and Alexa. |
| 1:32.4 | It raises a whole new side to the privacy debate. |
| 1:35.6 | How, for example, do we know that our devices are only recording when we want them to? |
| 1:39.9 | Hi, Zoe. |
| 1:40.7 | Hi, Manuela. |
... |
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