Nowadays, a lot of people is talking about a «conspiracy» that Facebook is denying constantly. Is Facebook listening to us? What can we do to avoid this? Let’s see what are the questions and the answers:
What is people saying?
People say that Facebook apps installed on our mobiles are recording our conversations, analyzing what we say and using this to target their ads.
What is the response from Facebook?
Facebook denies all of those accusations.
Is it technically possible?
Well, record all conversations and send them requires a lot of bandwidth. We are not talking about Echelon, neither recordings made by Google Now assistant. We are talking about all the conversations you maintain all the time, all the dialogues from the TV shows you are seeing and conversations from people near you.
What is the bandwidth you bought from your provider? 1Gb? 3Gb? 10Gb? It doesn’t matter. It is not enough to listen Spotify constantly, so it is not enough to send recordings with your full conversations.
Some people are saying that they record the conversations, analyze those using your mobile phone resources and get keywords that they can send to Facebook servers.
This theory is better but battery consumption… I don’t know.
Does it really matter?
Facebook has all your written conversations, it is the owner of Facebook, Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram, … It also owns your photos, videos, relations, … Facebook knows who is the first person who you talk every day, also knows what websites you visit and also the visits from your mom or your grandpa.
Facebook is not the only one who knows. Did you visit the link about Google records above? It’s the tip of the iceberg.
So it doesn’t matter if Facebook is listening and recording you. They know everything about you. All great companies know everything about you, so it doesn’t matter.
The only way you can follow to avoid this is become offline, at least offline from their apps and services. Are you prepared to be disconnected from your friends and family? If not, you can’t be safe.