On several occasions we have spoken about one of the privacy problems on our mobiles , which is about the microphone and the possibility of constantly listening to what we are talking about. If you still did not know, there are certain things in all this and we want to make clear how mobiles listen to us, in addition to the methods we must follow so that our mobile does not listen to us.
When it comes to talking about our security and privacy, we like to have everything under control and therefore, we want you to know all the functions of your mobile. Possibly you do not care that Google or other applications such as Facebook know to some extent what you are talking about, since its utility is not intended as a spy mechanism but has a very different purpose.
This is how our mobiles listen to us
The main purpose of mobile phones when listening to us has to do with the advertising that they will show us later. Just by listening to some keywords , they are able to recognize what our interests are and thus be able to offer us advertising adapted to our tastes. When for example we have a conversation with our friends on a television, our mobile phone is able to recognize this term. This is not only done by Google in the system, it is also replicated by other applications such as social networks Facebook or Instagram.
This measure in itself does not have any danger, since they will only be able to recognize terms of interest for advertising and at no time is the information stored . Despite this, there are many people concerned about security who want to prevent the phone from listening to them and luckily it is very easy to avoid it.
Deactivate the assistant so that it does not hear you
One of the great advances in our mobiles has been voice assistants , a technology that is designed to facilitate tasks by just talking through our mobile. It offers us many functions, such as informing us about the weather and news or getting more out of it through home automation in our home. Although despite the advantages it offers us, there are users who do not use it and prefer to disable it on both Android and iOS.
How to disable Siri on iPhone
To prevent Siri and the entire iOS system from knowing what you are talking about, you can enter “Settings”, go to the “Siri and search” menu, and then deactivate the ” Activate when you hear” Hey Siri “function. Complete the Apple Assistant and you will not be able to know anything of what we say, an extra security measure that is complemented by measures to increase privacy in iOS .
Turn off Google Assistant on Android phones
To get rid of the Google assistant we will have to enter the wizard itself and tap on our profile picture, which will take us to a series of options where we will tap on the wizard tab and scroll to the final section to find and enter ” Telephone “ . Inside we have several customization options, but we will look for Voice Match , to disable Ok Google.
Eliminate microphone access in apps
Not only can the system listen to what we say, the applications also have access to our conversations and keywords, just as before with the intention of showing us results or advertising according to our interests. We explain how you can disable microphone access in iOS and Android for each application individually.
Privacy on Facebook, Instagram and other applications on iPhone
It is very easy for iPhone users to disable and control the applications that have access to the microphone. First of all we have to enter the “Settings”, go to the ” Privacy ” section and tap on ” Microphone “. Here we will find all the applications that can use it and we can manually disable them.
Withdraw permission to microphone in Android apps
On Android phones, the process is somewhat more complicated and slow, since we must enter each application one by one, despite the fact that there are already some layers of customization that begin to allow access to all apps in the style of iOS. To disable access to the microphone on all Android phones, we must enter “Settings”, find the ” Applications ” section and tap on the one to which we want to remove access to the microphone.
Within each application we have access to permissions, where we can choose ” Microphone” as well as the rest of permissions. We remember that if we remove them we will get the mobile to not listen to us, specifically with these apps, but we could run into errors later when trying to use the applications.
