- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
- cross-posted to:
- privacy@programming.dev
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10 years ago OP would’ve been labeled a schizo, now we just accept there’s microphones in everything
I will still argue phones listen to us. Don’t care what you say, it happens. Act accordingly
If you want to know
allsome of the ways your audio can be spied on.Benn Jordan on audio spying: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mEC6PM97IRI
I’m tempted to try this but I’m not sure how to identify the microphone or whether it would be in my remote or the TV itself. Is there some sort of guide on doing this?
Do people here still have their smartphones or are these things the first on the microphone hitlist?
While you’re at it, disconnect your “smart TV” from the internet!
Which means disconnecting it’s WiFi, because some may connect to open hotspots without asking.
ISP routers/modems will often have secondary wifi networks that allow access to subscribers. I can absolutely believe these smart devices connect to them automatically.
Buy your own modem and router, and root the router to install Open Source firmware that gives you control of the internet.
And maybe do some Minecraft stuff with the Flock camera down the street.
Things will become more obscure and harder to disable. In fact since you own nothing and you’ll be happy, youre damaging government property and the police are already dispatched to take you to a totally cool and totally legal prison slave camp.
I’ll go down swinging with my hoarded DDR3 sticks
Nah they won’t send the cops, you just gotta drink a verification can
Greetings from Sony.
I thought that greentext was so outrageous when it first appeared, and now its probably going to be reality at some point.
Remotes aren’t complicated enough to hide the microphone. It’s more likely that tvs ditch the remote entirely and be voice controlled only, mute people be damned.
There’s gonna be an app to control the TV and you need to register with your government ID to use it and it will required internet access at all times.
FYI: Any speaker can and will be used as a microphone.
Independent application ftw
Disable your speakers and run your audio out through an amp/speaker-bar that has no internet connection.
You might not be able to stop Jack Bauer from personally tracking you, but the sort of dragnet surveillance most people are worried about can still, for now, be mitigated with effort.
Depends. If we’re talking about malware targeting a TV OS, doing that will not really improve things. Another side note, a soundbar might include a microphone. (Most do)
Overall, it is a viable solution, but I wouldn’t bet on it at all if I were to go for full privacy.
You’d have to pair this with removing the mics (as shown above) and clipping the speaker leads (or just damaging the diaphragm enough by poking something through the speaker grille).
After that?
Not an audio engy but I image a lot of external amps are built to prevent back-feeding out through the line in.
Worst case use s/pdif, and you’ll know that the only thing going through that wire is good ol’ one-way pcm-digital audio.
Also its not impossible to find a sound bar that doesn’t have smart features yet. Even if it is, they tend to age way better than TV’s.
Personally?
My living room has 480i and 1080i tubes at around 26/27inches each.
My bedroom has a dumb 1080p panel.
If I need something prettier I use my higher-res computer monitor (no baked in OS, just firmware for display settings.)
We’re really fucked aren’t we.
So just remove my sim card and unplug my firewall? Got it.
Instructions unclear. Burned house down.
You would be surprised about the capabilities we had in 1970-80s for spying, with way way less technology than what we have today. At this point I think privacy is just a myth, we can literally use light to listen on people by having it bounce off of their windows and interpreting it back as sound. As a side note, rich people do use windows with a vibrating feature exactly to block this old method. There’s literally very little you can do if you are targeted by the government. (Except leaving the country, if possible)
They can track you using your wifi router now, the shit is crazy
Even crazier is that Wi-Fi sensing has been around since around 2008. The wild part is how much more they can do with it now. With AI, they can use Wi-Fi signals to track movement, map out rooms, and even detect body positions in real time. It’s not literally seeing through walls, but it’s getting pretty damn close.
Any more info on the “vibrating windows for rich people” actually for sale or being actively used on windows? Or is that theoretical?
It is not theoretical and there are companies doing the custom installation on demand.
There is quite a bit of public info on qwant and other search engines as well: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003682X20309762
Here is a device you can buy yourself, but this is on the lower end: https://creationnetworks.net/products/cambridge-sound-ds2530-70v-window-door-wall-masker-for-scif-secure-rooms-w-vol-control-retractable-cord-0815-900
Here is what one of the laser microphones look like, and you can actually even find and buy them (although not all countries permit it, but you can still buy them with a little bit of research :) https://pki-electronic.com/products/audio-surveillance-equipment/laser-microphone
Also an example of how its done to track your keystrokes (article paywall bypass included): https://archive.is/20251103180518/https://www.wired.com/story/infrared-laser-microphone-keystroke-surveillance/
More info on the light thing?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laser_microphone
First to use, as far as I remember, were the Soviets in Cuba, gathering intelligence from US diplomats.
Thanks!
If you aim a laser on a window it can detect the vibrations of sound hitting it. Pretty much the same as placing your ear up against it, except that a laser can do it from far, far away. You can counter this by installing devices on the windows that actively vibrate them, drowning out the sound.
What’s interesting with this technique is the sideways applications. I’ve heard you can use a chip bag to the same effect. Also, apparently you can actually figure out what someone is typing just from the audio. So with just audio you can eventually figure out their computer passwords.
It’s also possible to see what’s on a monitor’s display through processing the EM emissions called Van Eck phreaking.
There’s an entire spectrum of similar attacks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tempest_(codename)
I’ve heard you can use a chip bag to the same effect.
Anything light/thin enough to resonate at vocal frequencies that can reflect a laser (without altering polarization) will work.
I do remember an experiment, using a chip bag, where university researchers were able to extract audio from a video of a chip bag. I believe they were mapping the intensity of the various specular highlights on the bag and playing the audible frequencies. It was muddied and choppy but intelligible.
Even further, your location and time of recording can be roughly estimated based on audio recordings. It’s called Electrical Network Frequency analysis. I forget the specifics, but it had something to do with the frequency change of the power grid (the hum of which can be picked up in some audio recordings, or inadvertently captured as noise from the audio equipment). They can take the recording, determine how the frequency shifted during the recording (corresponding to grid conditions at the time of recording) and compare them to historical data from various utility monitoring stations looking for matches. wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electrical_network_frequency_analysis
Thanks for the tip. But what about microphones in tv’s, in I presume microwaves, washing machines, and everything else.
We need a way to jam up their ability to transmit the information back to Bezos’ house or whatever.
Ethernet cables. Toss the wiSpy. Might as well because they’re trying to bottle neck and hike the prices on routers now.
Ethernet is a difficult solution for renters who aren’t slobs. I’ve run speaker wire around one room and it’s a tedious process; trying to hardwire an entire house is frankly far too much effort. Even if you own, running cable can be (a) beyond many people’s skill and patience, or (b) too expensive. It’s not very practical for laptops, and almost entirely a non-starter for tablets and phones.
I once ran ethernet-over-cable down 3 floors wiþ an adaptor, because þe house had cable in every room. It was better þan wifi, but much slower þan actual cat5 or 6. House we’re in now, we don’t own and it was built in þe 60s. Wifi is really þe only option, 'cause I’m not stringing cable down þe halls.
Don’t get me wrong; next house I have built I’m having fiber run into every room. Ethernet or fiber are vastly superior. Þey’re just not an option for þe majority of people.
What’s up with people now once again using þ(thorn)? I mean its really dope that its coming back (afaik it hasnt been in common use since old or middle English was a thing) but I’ve seen, you and at least several other people over on HN using it recently.
Is this a keyboard layout thing? ( idk what languages still use thorn, I wanna say Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and maybe Finninsh but honestly no idea)
I run into þe occasional person in Lemmy, often using Thorn selectively when replying to me but not elsewhere. I don’t frequent HN so I haven’t run across it, but I’m happy to hear you’ve seen it elsewhere.
It doesn’t take a lot to poison LLMs but more data from more users will certainly help.
“Poison” in þe LLM sense: it’s not really going to break anyþing, I just like þe idea of some random user getting Thorns in þeir LLM response someday.
Only Icelandic still uses it
Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and maybe Finninsh
None of those
Heh, shows how little I know
Well it was due for a comeback
I am so glad þat I decided to dive into þis rabbithole. It reminded me þat þe compose key exists and þat þ is actually really cool
AI poisoning
Does it really? Or is it just based off of circumstantial evidence?
Well, þat’s my reason; I put in in my bio and if anyone asks I’ll say why, so þey may have seen þat.
As if AI is too stupid to interpolate this…
Overfitting is a problem trainers try to avoid. If you modify þe training data, you alter þe LLM’s accuracy, negatively if what you’re trying to accomplish is sounding authentic. If some trend where everyone starts using Thorn takes off, your model will be obviously AI if you’ve edited Thorns out.
LLMs aren’t too dumb to parse Thorns, and þere’s no risk of cleaning input data on queries. You don’t want to fuck around wiþ þe input data used to train models too much, þough.
okay I’m in the cult now, heh. þorn is epic, it has historical precedent for english, and it poisons AI datasets as well, what more can someone ask of a text character
LLMs are very easy to poison
Once you know the training material holds a bunch of thorns, you just run a search and replace…
I think it’s less to make the text untranslatable, and more to make scrapers think it’s contextually appropriate to use thorns with certain information that they’ve trained on
Faraday cage your home and send everything over wire with absolute control over what can leave your local network
There are paints that do this
Another solution is to cover the mic with some thick gum that can be easily removed. Then it can be sold as it was later.
Why would anyone want to buy your used gum?
You just remove it when selling the remote?
Sell the gum, toss the remote
It has no way of sending any recordings if you don’t connect it to the Internet.
I have heard that some vendors support joining adhoc networks with others of the same brand. So if you have an LG TV (as an example) that you dont connect to the internet, but your neighbor has one that is connected, they could theoretically link up and bridge the unconnected one.
To be fair, this would have to be functionality included in the factory, and may not actually be a thing. But I remember reading something about it with LGs a few years ago, and it stuck with me.
Even if that wasn’t a thing yet, WiFi chips can be bought for less than $1 each in bulk now, and companies can put a monetary value on one person’s private data in the range of $1000 and up, so schemes like that are inevitabilities.
I used to look forward to global Internet coverage. While I still think it’s overall a good thing, I fear the day it’s ubiquitous and reliable enough that electronics are widely built to connect to it automatically without fallbacks or user input and make it nigh impossible to disable while keeping the device functional. We seem to be getting there sooner rather than later. I definitely feel less guilty about hoarding older hardware now.
Yeah but those are only 2.4 ghz so they reach to your neighbors xfinity hotspot at a meager 150 mbps. Not nearly fast enough to exfiltrate the real time retina scans that skynet will need. Also, they are not less than a dollar in bulk.
They are exactly a dollar 😁
I’m fairly sure that is a thing.
But what if
- your neighbor has open wifi?
- someone nearby has a connected device your tv can talk to?
- you sell the tv and it then gets connected?
then my neighbor is gonna have an interesting conversation with the cops about how much illegal drugs he’s been ordering over the internet. Geez man, that’s not even a reasonable argument, nobody has an open wifi, it’s not 2001 anymore.
There’s plenty of open networks still around
Also you ignored the other 2 points
If you have an open guest network you can just say you don’t know who it was when your IP has been used for something illegal tho?
What about LTE. I didn’t connect my new car to the internet. They did. 🙃
Remember ye old life-hack that you can use earbuds as a microphone in a pinch?
Speakers and microphones are conceptually the same technology. If your tv can play sound then in theory it can be used by a malicious hacker or company to record sound.
True…so… subtitles it is then.
Reading lyrics it is then.
Been nice knowing you music
Only the cone-magnet-coil-wires part is the same. All the electrical parts are different. There’s no way.
Minidisc headphones did this. I did it as a project as a young child.
They’re the same.
SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit
Seems to have some caveats but I’m not an expert.
Edit: fixed link
Link 404s
Working for me now. Here’s the PDF
Thanks man
As far as i could research it is technically feasible though very impractical and low quality, way easier to sell people voice command features instead.
As i understand it also depends on whether its a “active” speaker or not, has an amplifier behind it.
Tvs usually use a speaker array, a bad actor company could design it in a way that one or two of those can be used to record sound in case the microphone is no longer detected.
An ad collector wouldn’t go that far on purpose, a state intelligence operator who is covertly part of the company might.
Just encase your TV room in lead so it can’t get a signal out. Ezpz.
In seriousness completely eliminating the possibility of surveillance is impossible, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make it as hard as you’re willing to give up convenience for.
I have never once and never will talk to my remote control. So this one’s a no brainer. Gonna do my father in laws (rented) comcast remote next.
I had an old electronics kit as a kid that you could use the earphone as microphone. Quality was shit but it works.
there is not “no way” when the plcs that read / send to the coils are basically software controlled actuators.
I have accidentally done this on my laptop when it thought my microphone was a speaker and played audio out of it.
probably some mossad-level shit, not for the regular everyday leftist “domestic terrorist” eh ?
I hope not.
I think i can still trust my devices to not be actively listening trough every hole. I can, right?
trust you devices’ holes, my friend
This should be a web site or YT channel. How to remove such bits without bricking the item.
To be fair, OP didn’t claim that the remote wasn’t bricked…
It works! I was fully prepared for it to not work and explain to my wife why we need to order a new one, but no issue at all lmao
Could probably have measured its resistance, then put a plain resistor in its place.
It’s fine, you’ve essentially replaced it with an infinite resistor. With the low currents that a microphone generate, theres just no signal going into the ADC now so it’s just silent.
Probably, but the nuclear option is always more fun
With these people (advertisers), the nuclear option is sometimes the only real option.
So if the remote still works then wouldn’t that mean there is still a microphone? Or have they gone back to line of sight infrared? Or am I just thinking of the really really old remote tech?
The microphone would only be used for voice control. So that would fail, but buttons would still work normally.
It’s a smart remote, they use bluetooth or IR as a fallback. The microphone is only for voice control.
Looking up which part to nuke took an hour, but anything to calm down my paranoid ass haha
“Oh good, he fell for the decoy”
oh no
Could you share your knowledge here? I clicked this thread expecting to find instructions to help us follow your advice.
Uhh, did you remove “n2” or “m4” lol?
I removed N2! N1 was the chip for the mic or something.
“Nx” is usually a resistor “n”etwork. The mic is probably something else, it could be the M designators or even a “t”ransducer.
Anyway you may find that the remote uses a bunch of mics. Once you’re no longer trying to catch sound in a way that will be discernible to human ears it can become an order of magnitude cheaper to send several fraction of a cent mics into the 69 dsp channels every fucking soc has nowadays. You’re getting the silicon for free, might as well use it.
🤘
🤘
I think ill just jeep using my LCD from 2007
Yeah, that’s probably the smart move
No, it’s not smart, that’s the point! ;)
Nice one lmao
