Is Facebook eavesdropping on its users?

"Facebook eavesdropping on users" has become a popular concept, and many people believe it, especially when they notice ads displaying content related to and almost exactly matching the topics discussed in conversations with others. However, the truth is quite different, and skepticism about eavesdropping is actually a misunderstanding.

To display targeted ads, companies like Meta, Facebook, and Instagram don't need to resort to costly, risky, and inaccurate eavesdropping methods. Instead, they have more advanced tools to accurately understand what users want and are interested in at different stages of their search.

Eavesdropping on users' mobile devices is a costly and legally risky undertaking that Facebook certainly doesn't want to get involved in.

According to Jesse Pujji, founder of the technology investment company Gateway X, the tool used by Meta, called Facebook Pixel, is a piece of code found on almost every website and mobile application in the world today. This code measures advertising and web traffic, helping businesses obtain the necessary data for targeted advertising. Meta (Facebook's parent company) doesn't own the tool or the data itself, but they negotiate with businesses to share it mutually beneficially. Meta gets what they want, while businesses gain access to customer search queries, transaction history, and many other features on the social media platform.

Meanwhile, the News Feed (Facebook's homepage displaying updated news) possesses an algorithm with hundreds of data points—age, friend connections, click history, geographical location of posts, etc.—to calculate which ad is most effective to display on the news feed. With Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and others collaborating and sharing data from websites and mobile applications, Meta has an abundance of data to display ads to users regardless of which platform they are using.

Pujji further revealed that Facebook's algorithm can identify products users are interested in by looking at nearby smartphones, scanning data showing the most recent websites viewed by either person, and predicting the most likely topics they might discuss together to provide suggested ads. This algorithm is so intelligent that it catches so many cases that users feel like they are being spied on by the social network.

Jamie Court, a privacy expert and president of the NGO Consumer Watchdog, also confirmed that Facebook tracks users using various tools, not eavesdropping. "They gather scenarios and perform automated analysis, marketing content to users as if they were listening to a conversation," he asserted.

Comparitech technology expert Paul Bischoff also commented: "There are many ways for Facebook to run targeted ads to users based on data they collect through algorithms. Facebook can track your activity through websites, other apps with integrated plugins, as well as through login information and Facebook utilities."

Smartphones are not powerful enough to handle continuous long-term tracking without experiencing unusual issues with battery life, heat, or excessive wireless data consumption.

In a recent test, a Daily Mail tech reporter used a factory-restored phone to access a newly created Facebook account. After two days of chatting and intentionally mentioning keywords of different topics, the social network didn't suggest any ads. This was because the phone wasn't used for anything other than logging into Facebook.

In 2019, the security company Wandera placed two different smartphones in a sealed room and played a conversation about pet food for 30 minutes each day. After three days, they received no advertisements related to the topic, and the devices showed no signs of automatically sending data to internet servers.

Wandera concluded that Facebook does track user behavior, but eavesdropping is not feasible, especially with billions of users. Eavesdropping would require collecting and sending data to the cloud, demanding an internet connection and inevitably leading to overheating, rapid battery drain, or increased data bills – signs that are easily detected by users.

Facebook has approximately 2 billion daily users worldwide. Recording and uploading this many files to a cloud server is unthinkable. In the US alone, where 200 million people access Facebook daily, the storage capacity required to record conversations would be 26 petabytes (PB), or over 26 million GB.

The skepticism that Facebook doesn't record or download data but simply "listens and captures keywords" obtained through the microphone is unfounded. According to Antonio Garcia-Martinez, former Facebook product director, the phone's processor cannot handle this method, and users would immediately notice unusual performance issues.

Facebook wouldn't be foolish enough to break the law by intentionally activating the microphone on a device without the user's consent. Security companies could track this behavior in a matter of minutes and would readily file a lawsuit if they discovered any wrongdoing.

Source link: https://thanhnien.vn/facebook-dang-nghe-len-nguoi-dung-185230512212439794.htm