Qualification:
I’ve heard various rumors, some of which seem to be true, such as that the phone works even when it’s turned off and maybe records all the time you’re talking, and with neural networks you can find out what you said, even if you were ten meters away from the phone and in another room, you can use the neural network to improve the sound quality and still know What did you say.
There is also information that the phone can see through objects, so gluing something to the camera will not help.
I don’t know what to do, I’m scared. Do you have any ideas on how to save myself from this if I live in the city and use my smartphone?
The truth is, it depends on your “threat level,” which is to say, the level of privacy you need to deal with the threats to your safety, or at the very least, your privacy.
It’s fairly well known in privacy circles that Android exists primarily to collect data. It’s the whole reason Google, an advertising company, bought the OS from a hobbyist about 20 years ago. It basically sucks up your data and uses it to build an advertiser profile on you.
Apple’s iOS isn’t much better, because Apple partners with Google on a few things, for example making Google the default search on iOS. Also, if you install Google apps, they will carefully tunnel around any extra security iOS offers, giving them almost as much data as if you used an Android phone. And because iOS is not open source, we don’t know what it’s phoning home to Cupertino. Apple advertises the iPhone as a privacy platform, but it’s not very privacy friendly. It certainly isn’t open to independent audit.
Cameras cannot magically see through things. That’s horseshit. There are AI apps that generate nude versions of people. They wouldn’t need that if cameras had magical X-ray vision. Cameras DO see more than they appear to capture, however. They can see outside of the angles at which they capture, but they ignore that information. They can also capture more light than they let on. They can’t see through a plastic or metal cap, though. Like one of those cases with a slide cover on the camera. Those cases also do not cover the front-facing camera, and the iPhone 17 series use a square front-facing sensor that can capture in landscape (horizontally) while you are holding the phone in portrait (vertical) orientation. What’s it doing with the information on the sides? You don’t know.
However, the microphone is pretty damn sharp. Apple has a feature called Live Listen that basically turns an iPhone paired with AirPods into a legitimate spy device. So as a test, I stuck my AirPods into my wife’s ears, then I went into another room. I set the iPhone down, then walked a room away and fucking whispered and she knew exactly what I said. This is an Accessibility feature for people hard of hearing — I can enable it from my Control Centre and just hold out my iPhone, and hear what is being said from across a room. It’s even more effective if I set my iPhone down somewhere (or hide it) and move to the end of Bluetooth range (about ten metres). So if Apple can let you listen to this, any app with microphone access can do the same. So setting your iPhone down in another room and moving away from it does not mean Siri can’t hear what you say. And I have no doubt the sensitivity on Android phones is just as good. Android itself may even offer a similar feature. In any case, modern Android phones and modern iPhones do display an indicator when an app (or the system) is accessing your microphone. I do not know if this can be disabled.
As for turning them off. You can’t separate most Apple devices from a power source. You can with the Mac, and the HomePod speaker, and the Apple TV box. The Apple Watch specifically has a mode for when it’s turned off that shows you the time when you tap the screen. That is, turning it off doesn’t turn it off, it boots into a stripped-down version of watchOS (itself a stripped down version of macOS) that tells you the time. I would not be surprised if iPhones, iPads, and MacBooks had a similar function.
It can’t, for certain values of can’t.
On Google certified Android, the feature is required; apps cannot disable it, and there isn’t a UI toggle for it. A phone manufacturer who added a way to disable it would be breaking its contract with Google and could owe money or lose the ability to ship Google certified Android. As for Google’s own devices, “just trust us”. If you have a normal threat model, that’s probably good enough.
If someone very sophisticated and resourceful is targeting you directly, that may not be good enough. It can be disabled with ADB, and it’s possible to run ADB commands on-device. It would be hard to make that happen without physical access to your unlocked phone, but if your adversary is sophisticated enough and the stakes are high enough, it would be unwise to rule it out.
There’s a general thing throughout tech where off isn’t off. This is one of those cases where “off” is just a low power mode, but you can still turn it off for real. This is not specific to Apple Watch at all.
There’s some grains of truth in the rant
But you can turn off always listening or otherwise remove voice assistants from your life. You can turn off devices. And you can gain perspective that researchers doing something clever doesn’t necessarily translate to every device doing it.
Be more afraid of the personal data you’re “willingly” giving away. From profiles to location to listening/watching reading content and times to opinions and associations