Have you ever stopped to think that our own cell phone spies on us? On some occasions, it usually happens that you are talking to someone and some time later you go online and see ads in any application about the topic you were discussing with your friend or family member. This can only mean one thing: our cell phones are capable of listening to us without us knowing it. However, there are a series of tricks that you can put into practice to combat this event.
The reality today is that we live glued to our mobile phones and are continually connected to the Internet and social networks. What we don’t know is that Google and other applications are on the lookout to observe where we click and what pages we enter to control our tastes and preferences, but they not only realize our physical presence, but also our auditory presence.
And the technology giant is capable of listening to our conversations and then offering us suggestions about what we have been talking about. For example, if you were recently chatting with your friends about a car that you plan to buy in the future, the moment you pick up your smartphone and go online, you will be able to see advertising about vehicle sales. If you want to avoid being spied on, it is best to make some simple settings on your mobile, such as deactivating your microphone.
How to protect my conversations
In order to protect you from spies as powerful as Google that use their voice assistant even when offline, we need to go to the settings of our mobile phones and first deactivate our access to the microphone. To do this, we can do it on both iOS and Android in a similar way, but with certain nuances:
- On Android you must make these settings: first, go to your phone’s settings and click on Applications. Then search for Google and select Permissions. Click on Microphone to click Disallow. The second, go to Settings, type Google in the search bar and click on Manage your Google account to go to Data and privacy. Scroll to History Settings and tap Web Activity and Apps. Scroll down until you find Secondary Settings and uncheck the Include voice and audio activity option.
- On iOS, you can disable Siri in Settings, Privacy, Analytics and Improvements and finally in Improve Siri and Dictation. Once there, deactivate this last option, so that the voice recordings that have been made will be deleted instantly.
It should be noted that it is also possible to deactivate the “OK Google” command on Android phones in Settings, Google, Search, Voice and then click on Voice Recognition. Next, deactivate the “OK Google” option so that it cannot respond to your requests.
Other apps
After having completely deactivated the Google voice functions, it is important to know that other applications have this same feature, so it is up to you whether or not you want to deactivate them.
For example, in the case of WhatsApp or Telegram, if you want to send audio messages, you will not be able to do so if you deactivate this option. To do this, you will have to enter the permissions of each of them and go one by one to uncheck them. One of the recommended boxes is Always ask, so that when you open the app you give your consent to access the microphone or not.
