Private security

Your phone isn’t listening to you, researchers say, but it may be watching everything you do

You’ve seen the YouTube videos. It’s a shaky-cam iPhone shot with a wide-eyed someone giggling under their breath “cat food,” or some other miscellaneous thing they allegedly never talk about or search for near or on their device. The climax of this plot line hits in the following hours or days after they’ve muttered said random phrase, and they’re suddenly served an ad on Facebook of the exact same thing they said before. Preposterous! It’s the classic “your phone is listening to everything you say,” conspiracy theory that so many people have willingly started to believe. But, according to researchers from Northeastern University, reported by Gizmodo’s Kashmir Hill, this isn’t the case at all. After a yearlong study, they found no evidence that your apps are listening to you, but they did find out that they may be watching everything that you do.