Imagine you are having a private conversation with your family and friends, but it’s not as private as it seems. Your devices around your house are listening into your conversations, without you knowing it.

People have had many experiences where they are talking about a subject and later see videos, advertisements, and pictures about the topic they were just discussing.

Many find this creepy, while others find it helpful if you are discussing buying something new and that product pops up all over your social media feed.

¨I definitely do think devices listen in on conversations when we don’t know. When we were reading the book ‘Night’ in English, I started getting videos about the Holocaust on TikTok and seeing ads related to it,¨ said sophomore Erin Webre.

You allow your device to listen to you by allowing apps to access your microphone and accepting terms and conditions. Without your permission, your phone listening to you would be illegal, but is this a myth? Almost every device has a microphone. If you allow your apps to have access to it, then your privacy is gone.

You can test this out with your phone by talking about a topic out loud by your phone and seeing the resulting advertisements and content about your topic.

Google Assistant and Alexa are virtual assistant devices that use your microphone. These specific devices are connected to you and your family members’ phones. They listen to keywords called ¨wake words¨ you say and connect them to your phones.

You are not being recorded, but specific words you say can wake your devices to try and help you out with your topic.

Something you should be aware of is hackers who hack into your devices and spy on you. This becomes more of a problem because hackers can fully listen to you and gather your private information, rather than a regular device that just listens for ¨wake words.¨

Make sure to have extra protection on your devices to avoid this. If you don’t want apps listening to you, you can go into your settings and disable microphone use for apps. 

According to the website MoonLock, ¨Open your iPhone Settings, select Privacy & Security, tap Microphone. You will see a list of all the apps that have access to your microphone. Toggle off any app you’d like to deny access to the microphone, and you are good to go.¨

Just know that what you say can be listened to by hackers, and the words you say can be heard from your devices. To gain the privacy you want, go into your privacy settings and be careful with the information you have shared.