Many of us often comment on it between jokes but nothing is further from fiction. It is true, and verifiable, that the phone you use daily spies on you. And users are becoming more and more aware of it. Do you know if your mobile knows more about you than you could expect?
As we can read in this NordVPN study , over the last year the installation of monitoring apps on our mobiles has increased by 5% because many suspect that their smartphones are spying on them. And this is verified after conducting a simple online search, or even speaking close to the phone.
Put espionage to the test
You are the best product of all those “free” apps that you install on your smartphone. But it is not even necessary to download anything weird to the phone so that the terminal knows more than necessary. It is well known that companies like Google or Facebook monitor everything we do with the device.
A good way to know if the mobile is spying on us is to set a ‘trap’ in the following way:
- Pick a good topic that you don’t normally talk about.
- Isolate the theme from your phone. Don’t use the opaque phone to search for something on this topic. Just think about it for yourself and think of words related to the topic that the search engines can use.
- Now comment on the topic out loud next to your phone. You can do it alone or with someone else for several minutes or days. For example, even if you have long hair, start talking about hair implants.
After a few hours you will be able to check if your mobile phone displays ads (in social networks, search results, etc …) related to trips to Turkey, hair products or other aesthetic operations.
Why are they spying on me?
With the rise of assistants such as Google Assistant, Siri, Alexa, we ourselves have given consent for the mobile to listen to us through the microphone . It is enough to review the permissions granted to applications from the mobile settings to know what each of these services have access to, and to know the ways in which your phone is tracking you.
In fact, some apps may want to access your microphone for no reason. Why do you need a flashlight or a drawing app to access this component? Whenever this happens and these applications pass the Play Protect filter, be suspicious because beyond being used for advertising purposes, the data can be collected for more dangerous purposes.
There will be times when you should always use the microphone but you can configure the mobile settings , from the same menu mentioned, so that you are always asked if you want to activate it or not. You can also increase computer security with a VPN, a virtual private network that masks your IP address and encrypts your online traffic, thus improving your privacy.
