At the time I am typing this, the title on the page is:
""Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing""
Which is presently also the title on this post.
Then as I read it becomes clear that it is merely focusing on Facebook.
However the confusion that may stem from "Your phone isn’t secretly listening to you"
The blog post never attempts to establish that your phone is not listening to you, just that some companies may not be going it.
The truth is that your phone may well be listening to you . There is plenty of malware / spywear that uses exploits to achieve it.
Like the NSO group¹.
Tools to do so can be bouught on the malware market from other sources as well and we must assume that Mossad, NSA, and other major intellitence agencies have tools that exceed what you can buy on the open market.
You phone may aboslutely be listening to you. but probably it is not.
¹
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-24/nso-group... https://www.britannica.com/topic/Pegasus-spyware https://citizenlab.ca/2016/08/million-dollar-dissident-iphon...
https://newatlas.com/computers/smartphone-listening-conversa...
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-01-24/nso-group...
In aggregate, your phone is not listening to you, but if you are of great interest to a powerful adversary, it very well might be. But at that point, I would wager that's one of the smaller things on your plate.
Phones today show in the status bar if the camera/microphone is active.
If you can’t trust the software, why would you trust the software? Am I supposed to rely on the hope that an attacker can take over some part of the OS, but not the one rendering a tiny blob in the status bar?
Apple has moved these indicators into their “exclaves” removing any control or influence from the OS / software running.
Source? AFAIK they only have hardware indicators for webcams on cams, and it's not used for microphones.
Different person here, but Apple has tried it multiple times in different ways.
They started in ios14, iOS 17 got new Secure Exclave path that (A18, M4).
Search for “Secure Indicator Light”.
Also searching for “Secure Exclave” will reveal some fun reads.
I think Snowden worked with someone to create a bulky, apparatus that you could put your iphone into and it would measure if any signals at all were coming from it.
Does that mean the phone will not react to „Hey, Siri“ without a mic icon showing up in the status bar?