We started documenting microphone activation and spying last year. It happened before last year, but started happening a LOT last year. I first noticed this over the summer when I was chatting with someone and ads started popping a few hours later.. I didn't fully realize what was taking place until later last year when I was in a confidential meeting with 3 people. Within 3 hours after the meeting I started getting ads for the topic of that confidential meeting. The interesting part is, while we weren't in a SCIF, we WERE in a room without internet/computers/cameras, and the only thing we had were our phones shoved into our pockets in airplane mode.
Then we started conducting experiments to verify this by playing recorded voices in a test environment, and it happened again. So we started removing apps. It still happened. That's when a former facebook engineer reached out to me privately and explained how this happens. Basically, in a nutshell, they use hidden app permissions pre-approved by Google/Apple on the backend of their products. This scoops up tag-cloud-like data, converting audio streams to tagged bits and sending it off. Those tagged bits are analyzed for data and used to serve you ads based on 'listening' around your environment. ALL of this is being stored. ALL of it COULD be used for spying, court cases, incrimination, framing, control, honeypot, manipulation, everything really.
Disabling all of it amounts to very nearly crippling your phone. RFID bag won't stop it as it will scoop the data offline, then send it when you connect. As of right now, I believe Microphone Blocking Apps actually do seem to work, at least some of them because they work at a fairly low level on the phone. All phones in our home have microphone and camera blockers that only unlock for a couple specific apps and phone calls.
Placing your phone into a scif bucket before confidential conversations doesn't always work now. That bucket must also be sound proofed or it will STILL pick up activity. Airplane mode isn't effective, at all and is largely as placebo. Jamming signals in your home won't work, the phones still record, and just wait for an active connection. Now keep in mind something important - even if YOU protect your phone, everyone else around you IS NOT, therefore - active and passive surveillance is STILL being conducted on you through THEIR phone microphone! Also, there is evidence active data is being piggybacked from phone to phone, so if your phone is locked down and you are in range of one that isn't, the one that isn't will hop over to yours and 'see what's going on'. We must assume they can fully identify almost everyone on the planet with voice-ID by now and this is all vastly more nefarious than we realize.
If anyone doubts these are surveillance devices and bugs, all of these revelations should assuage them.. That's exactly what they are!
