Facebook does not secretly listen to your phone conversations. Really

Stop me if you've heard this one: after talking about something specific, an ad related to this topic appears on your Facebook feed.

It's strange, confusing and, like most urban legends, almost everyone has a variant of this story. Thanks to the wealth of data that the gigantic social network already has on you – your geographical position, your network of friends, your centers of interest and your buying habits – it's like if Facebook listened to you.

This is certainly not the case.

In an informal study, CNET journalists discussed predefined topics in front of their phones and then watched the devices for the associated commercials. We did not find anything that suggests that Facebook has surprised our conversations. Security experts also failed to find evidence that the social network was spying on users to target ads more effectively.

Facebook itself has denied this on many occasions, including co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, who had told Congress last year that the company was not doing it.

"No. Let me be clear: you are talking about this conspiracy theory of listening to the sound of your microphone and using it for commercials," Zuckerberg told Senator Gary Peters. "We do not do that."

But the fact that the conspiracy theory is still in the news is a testament to the enormous machine set up by Facebook to recover your data and exploit it to broadcast targeted advertising. This theory carries more weight than other instances of the industry, such as CIA malware, which could turn telephones and TVs into listening devices, and some Samsung TVs that capture private conversations.

But Facebook does not need to listen to you to understand what you are thinking of, there are hundreds of other ways. And this ability to gather information has attracted increasing interest since 2018, when confidentiality of data has become a public concern. Legislators are now looking to limit the number of tech giants who can learn more about us and how they can use them.

You can not be blamed for feeling the allure of this conspiracy theory, especially when the commercials are so specific. But Facebook is learning about your preferences with hundreds of data points. Information such as where you are, what you have purchased, what you have searched online, and the identity of your friends can help tech giants make appalling predictions.

Privacy experts have found that people were jumping too often to this conclusion because it was a simple answer and that the real reason why these ads are so specific is a complex question. Jake Laperruque, lead counsel for the Constitution Project, said that he often hears people rushing over this conclusion and tries to bring out the issues related to the theory.

"They usually say," I can not imagine another way to advertise to me, "said Laperruque." Think outside the box. What about location-based advertising or research from a friend? Take a few minutes to think about how much data companies have. "

Asked about the conspiracy theory, Facebook reiterated a statement made in 2016.

"We only use your microphone if you have given permission to our application and are actively using a specific feature requiring audio," the company said in a statement. "We do not access the microphone just because the application is open and we do not use it when you are not in the app."

Proof against Facebook eavesdropping

Security researchers conducted a network traffic analysis to search for audio data sent to Facebook without finding any evidence. And if Facebook exploited all this audio content, it would be a gigantic data leak, said Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare.

Given that Facebook has more than 2 billion active users a month, it would be a logistical nightmare to listen 24 hours a day so that the company can send you relevant ads.

"I would not be surprised if you reached a level of total data usage that would exceed the total capacity of the Internet," Prince said. "Two billion times, everything will become a very large number."

Analyzing speech and converting it into text so that artificial intelligence is then disseminated is also a difficult task. Google and Amazon are trying to understand human language with their respective home helpers and Alexa. And that includes the problems of background noise, accents, mumblings, slang and volume.

"Listening to real-time conversations poses many challenges," said Gabriel Weinberg, CEO of the private search engine DuckDuckGo. "For your voice to text to be correct, by extracting all this information, you would need a specific artificial intelligence."

It looks like Facebook is building its own smart wizard, but it should be enabled and not be secretly registered and preinstalled on your phones.

Apart from technical difficulties, it would also be totally illegal for Facebook to do so, said Laperruque.

If Facebook was secretly recording people's conversations to run ads, it would be violating the wiretap, the lawyer said. If Facebook was surprised doing so with its billions of users, it would be subject to billions of dollars in debt, he said.

The social network has already incurred $ 3 billion in expenses related to a Federal Trade Commission investigation into its Cambridge Analytica data scandal.

"There is criminal liability and, in this case, it would not be worthwhile for companies to expose themselves to legal risks," Laperruque said. "It's not like you could say:" I received this advertisement because they were engaged in this massive illegal scheme. "

So, how are these ads so specific?

Even without listening at all times, the tech giants know enough to fit such a specific ad that you might think that they were secretly recording your thoughts.

You're constantly being monitored online, allowing tech companies like Facebook and Google to learn all kinds of things about you.

Technology companies know the websites you visit through their tracking pixels, location-based data, and what you've purchased: Google knows about 70% of all US credit card purchases.

They do not just have this data for you, they also have it on your friends. Even if you have never searched for a certain product online, if your friends have already done so, you will have a much higher chance of seeing ads for it. The same goes for the same location as anyone else.

The way data tracking is structured online, tech giants do not need to listen, experts say. Weinberg said all technology giants have everything they need: tracking search, browsing history, geolocation and purchase history.

"With these four things alone, you can learn a lot about someone," Weinberg said. "You can get more from the current tracking infrastructure than listen to your conversations."

The truth is there

Despite this evidence, the theory persists, even among the experts who know all this information.

Stephen Cobb, security researcher at ESET, said he was conducting his own experiment to see if his devices were secretly recording his conversations to run ads. As in the CNET study, he had several conversations at home about products that he had never researched, such as Casper mattresses, Qwip toothbrushes, and sneakers. Allbird, then he searched for advertisements that might appear.

He is aware of the massive data drag that companies like Facebook and Google have on him. He also knows that he has been tested by security researchers analyzing data traffic, but Cobb remains skeptical.

For years, he has been studying the shady measures that the advertising industry would take to get clicks online, and he does not think it's an exaggeration to claim that Facebook could use a secretly recorded sound. And like many who believe in the theory, he has also seen advertisements that have surprised him many times.

"We've heard legitimate marketers talk enthusiastically about the potential of targeted advertising based on what you're talking about," said Cobb. "This may not be a listening to Facebook, it could be someone else who would sell this information to Facebook."

Facebook said it was buying unidentified audio data to train its artificial intelligence for voice features such as transcripts.

Experts do not expect this conspiracy theory to disappear one day. As long as these ads are not so specific, users will continue to draw the same conclusion.

Cobb said that he had seen no ads for the products that he had been deliberately talking about for several days.

Laura Hautala from CNET contributed to this report.