FB having access to microphone makes sense for plenty of other completely innocent reasons (for example, if you can record a video from inside the app).
If this was actually true, I can’t help but feel that someone would have proven it technically by now instead of relying on these types of self experiment and anecdotes, especially given how commonly this is touted.
No.
Just tested this out, zero indication that the mic is hot on a recent iPhone with up-to-date software when recording a voice memo.
Edit: There ya go... downvotes for saying the iPhone has no indicator when you record audio.
1) Does your iPhone still record audio when the screen is off?
2) Can you see the audio indicator when the screen is off?
3) If a background app starts then stops recording audio while the screen is off, would you have an indicator that it recorded audio?
Yes. iOS displays an indicator if an app has recently used the mic.
> Note: Whenever an app uses the camera (including when the camera and microphone are used together), a green indicator appears. An orange indicator appears at the top of the screen whenever an app uses the microphone without the camera. Also, a message appears at the top of Control Center to inform you when an app has recently used either.
Source: https://support.apple.com/en-nz/guide/iphone/iph168c4bbd5/io...
Also, I feel like the goal posts are moving quite fast in one direction.
The phone was sitting between two people having a conversation, one of them "swiped it open" meaning it was off to begin with, then was immediately displayed an ad for that conversation, and upon hearing this the tech-savvy person in the house understood what happened, confirmed it with the mic access to facebook in the settings, and then disabled the behavior.
Considering the original claim was "zero indication that the mic is hot" and now it's "zero indication that the mic is hot if the screen is off", I'd say that the goal post has moved considerably.
But if you want to know if Facebook is listening to you through the iPhone microphone, you should probably look at the screen for the indicator. iOS apps can't start recording on their own in the background, there's no API for that. If they are listening to you, they'd have to start the audio session in the foreground, which would allow you to see the indicator.
https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/65604
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/70562929/how-to-start-au...
(Unless you believe that Facebook is using some kind of a private system API for this and is passing through the App Store checks)
I wrote the original "Wife swipes open the phone" comment, so that's the context you seem to be missing. Sure you can see a little dot on your phone when YOU run some experiment today and look for it, but was that indicator available in the exact situation where the targeted ad was displayed? No.
Also, this incident happened in the past and we know there have been dramatic API changes on both Apple and Facebook products. The limits of the API today don't reflect the capabilities that were available to developers in the past. I doubt Facebook is hacking the App Store process to use hidden APIs. It was probably just available in the past and my wife granted the facebook app complete access to the mic, so they took what they wanted.
I'd make sure to disable that permission today too, just in case.
One last thing is I just opened my iPhone again and hit record. I honestly didn't see the tiny orange pixel at the top of my phone until you pointed it out. I was basically looking for the green video indicator light to show. So I'm technically wrong about NO indication, you're welcome.
They explicitly said they were using an iPhone?
They have far better information that shows I’m not interested in alcohol or extreme sports. Audio in the background is so low-signal that it isn’t worth showing ads based on it.
Even just transcribing speech something accurately is not something that was possible until the last couple of years. Yet this conspiracy theory has been around for a decade or more.
Yeah, it's probably not a coincidence that your wife is talking about X and is recognised by Facebook to be in a group of people that are interested in X.