{"id":80231,"date":"2022-12-06T19:14:16","date_gmt":"2022-12-06T19:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/muting-your-mic-reportedly-doesnt-stop-big-tech-from-recording-your-audio-tnw\/"},"modified":"2022-12-06T19:14:16","modified_gmt":"2022-12-06T19:14:16","slug":"muting-your-mic-reportedly-doesnt-stop-big-tech-from-recording-your-audio-tnw","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/muting-your-mic-reportedly-doesnt-stop-big-tech-from-recording-your-audio-tnw\/","title":{"rendered":"Muting your mic reportedly doesn&#039;t stop big tech from recording your audio &#8211; TNW"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This article was published on <strong>April 12, 2022<\/strong><br \/>                                         <input class=\"c-contributor__expandInput\" id=\"contributorExpandInput123\" name=\"expand\" type=\"checkbox\">                                          <span class=\"c-contributor__bio c-contributor__bio--truncated\">                                             Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns:                                                                                               <label class=\"c-contributor__expand neural\" for=\"contributorExpandInput123\">                                                     (show all)                                                 <\/label>                                                                                     <\/span>                                          <span class=\"c-contributor__bio c-contributor__bio--full\">                                             Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: He\/him                                         <\/span>                                     <br \/>Anytime you use a video teleconferencing app, you\u2019re sending your audio data to the company hosting the services. And, according to a new study, that means <i>all <\/i><span>of your audio data. This includes voice and background noise whether you\u2019re broadcasting or muted.<\/span><br \/><span>Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison investigated \u201cmany popular apps\u201d to determine the extent that video conferencing apps capture data while users employ the in-software \u2018mute\u2019 button.<\/span><br \/><span>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/youre-muted-or-are-you-videoconferencing-apps-may-listen-even-when-mic-is-off\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">a university press release<\/a>, their findings were substantial:<\/span><br \/><span>They used runtime binary analysis tools to trace raw audio in popular video conferencing applications as the audio traveled from the app to the computer audio driver and then to the network while the app was muted.<\/span><br \/><span>They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not.<\/span><br \/>Subscribe to our newsletter now for a weekly recap of our favorite AI stories in your inbox.<br \/><span>Unfortunately, as this research remains unpublished, we\u2019re unable to confirm the specific apps tested. So, for now, we can\u2019t name and shame them.<\/span><br \/><span> However, the efficacy of this paper isn\u2019t necessarily in doubt due to the fact that it\u2019s been accepted to the <a href=\"https:\/\/petsymposium.org\/2022\/paperlist.php\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">2022 Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium<\/a>. We\u2019ll just have to wait and see who gets name-dropped when the paper is published in June. <\/span><br \/><span>However, that doesn\u2019t mean we can\u2019t draw some conclusions. According to the researchers, this data could be used to extract meaningful information. And, with a little machine learning, that information can paint an incredibly vivid picture of a user\u2019s reality \u2014 again, even with your microphone muted in the app. <\/span><br \/><span>The research team was able to determine what specific audio was being sent during testing and, by extrapolating that data, they were able to predict what inferences big tech could make.<\/span><br \/><span>Of course, big tech uses AI to parse everything. So the researchers built their own algorithms to study the data. What they found was astonishing.<\/span><br \/><span>Per the <a href=\"https:\/\/wiscprivacy.com\/publication\/vca_mute\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">unpublished paper\u2019s abstract<\/a>:<\/span><br \/><span>Using network traffic that we intercept en route to the telemetry server, we implement a proof-of-concept background activity classifier and demonstrate the feasibility of inferring the ongoing background activity during a meeting \u2014 cooking, cleaning, typing, etc. We achieved 81.9% macro accuracy on identifying six common background activities using intercepted outgoing telemetry packets when a user is muted.<\/span><br \/><span><strong>In other words:<\/strong> grad students at the University of Wisconsin-Madison were able to build machine learning models capable of determining what a teleconference app user was doing while their microphone was muted with greater than 80% accuracy.<\/span><br \/><span><strong>File under:<\/strong> Imagine what Google or Microsoft could do with their massive <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/topic\/artificial-intelligence\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">AI<\/a> models. Yikes!<\/span><br \/><span><strong>Neural\u2019s take:<\/strong> Should you be concerned? Yes. Absolutely. Should you stop using these apps? No, because that\u2019s not really an option for everybody.<\/span><br \/><span>Our real concern is that big tech either doesn\u2019t care whether users know they\u2019re being recorded even when they\u2019re muted, or it never stopped to think users <\/span><i>would<\/i><span> care. Either way, it shows a disturbing level of detachment from the user experience. <\/span><br \/><span>Big tech\u2019s unspoken mantra is \u201cdata at all costs,\u201d and this just goes to prove how thirsty the beast is. There\u2019s no good reason not to explicitly inform users in large print that the mute button doesn\u2019t stop their audio feed to the server. <\/span><br \/><span>Luckily, you\u2019ve got options. If you truly want to mute your audio feed, you need to perform a double mute. If you\u2019re fortunate enough to own a headset that has a physical mute button on it, use that to mute your headset and then use the button in the app as an extra layer of muting.<\/span><br \/><span>If your headset doesn\u2019t have a physical mute button, or you\u2019re using an onboard microphone to communicate, you\u2019ll need to do a system mute by muting your microphone from the system settings in your operating system, as well as muting in the app. <\/span><br \/><span>At the end of the day, it\u2019s unclear exactly what big tech\u2019s doing with this data. The scope of the study didn\u2019t involve investigating big tech \u2014 and we\u2019ll update this piece if Zoom, Microsoft, or Google get back to us with a statement. <\/span><br \/><span>But, no matter what, the fact that it\u2019s being collected under such <\/span><i>misleading<\/i><span> circumstances is cause for major concern.<\/span><br \/><span>Forcing users to go into operating system menus in order to ensure they\u2019re achieving a modicum of privacy is an anti-user policy. And, furthermore, it demonstrates how much more sensitive our audio data can be than our video data. <\/span><br \/><span>As lead author on the study Kassem Fawaz said in the university press release: <\/span><br \/><span>With a camera, you can turn it off or even put your hand over it, and no matter what you do, no one can see you. I don\u2019t think that exists for microphones.<\/span><br \/><span>Don\u2019t forget to double mute, folks. You\u2019ll probably forget to double <\/span><i>unmute<\/i><span> from time to time, but the trade-off is keeping Google, Microsoft, and all the others from training their machines on the ambient sounds of your private life. <\/span><br \/>Greetings Humanoids! Did you know we have a newsletter all about AI? You can subscribe to it right here.<br \/>Check out the TNW Conference 2022 post-show report \u2192<br \/>The heart of tech<br \/>                     Copyright &copy; 2006&mdash;2022, The Next Web B.V.                     Made with &lt;3 in Amsterdam.                     <\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.google.com\/__i\/rss\/rd\/articles\/CBMiVWh0dHBzOi8vdGhlbmV4dHdlYi5jb20vbmV3cy9tdXRpbmcteW91ci1taWMtZG9lc250LXN0b3AtYmlnLXRlY2gtcmVjb3JkaW5nLXlvdXItYXVkaW_SAQA?oc=5\">source<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article was published on April 12, 2022 Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: (show all) Tristan is a futurist covering human-centric artificial intelligence advances, quantum computing, STEM, physics, and space stuff. Pronouns: He\/him Anytime you use a video teleconferencing app, you\u2019re sending your [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":80232,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80231","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80231","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80231"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80231\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80231"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80231"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/loopbeatzz.info\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80231"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}