Nearly every device in your household with a Bluetooth or internet connection listens to you. Smart TVs, phones, laptops, computers, TV remotes, and game consoles any device made after 2008 has a chance of having a built-in microphone and internet connection.
There’s a fantastic video by Gamers Nexus on YouTube that describes the issue in detail, but the premise of the video is that he opens an LG TV that has a built-in microphone, which detects people’s words and transfers them to remote devices as text. Even their remotes have built-in microphones, which do the same thing. The company uses this data to influence algorithms and sells it for profit. This practice isn’t limited to LG, Samsung, or Apple; every company that manufactures devices with any computing capability engages in this behavior to secretly spy on you for profit.
Computers and laptops are no better. Every internet search, anything you say into a microphone built in or not, they also record your words for profit. You’ve probably seen people with tape over their cameras; for example, Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, has been caught with tape on his laptop camera.
It’s a common belief of many that your computer cameras also record you constantly even without telling you, hence why you might have had someone tell you to put a piece of tape over your camera for privacy.
I don’t think we’re concerned enough about this information frankly. We have actual proof that our devices are listening to the words we say, and there are no legal repercussions for spying on American citizens.
We install Ring cameras on our doorbells so one company can have cameras in front of every house in the country. Yet some people are terrified that we’re becoming a surveillance country like China, but there are already microphones listening to our every word. Our every internet search is recorded. Our phones have GPSs that track our location. There are cameras on every traffic light.
We should voice more concern on this matter, especially with corporate spying in every American household. The issue also involves terms and services that are legally required, but most people do not read them. Terms and Services should be more accessible to the average person. Just because something’s there to read doesn’t mean it’s simple to understand. I can’t think of anyone outside of a lawyer who would read a 20-page terms and services paper before using a TV for the first time.
It’s all tiptoeing around illegal activities, but unfortunately we have a plethora of more pressing issues in this country, like gas and apparently bathrooms, that people concern themselves over. I hope we do something about these issues, but smart devices have such a chokehold over the world I don’t think anything’s happening any time soon, but countries do rebel against corporations, like Europe with the USB-C cable requirements, so it could happen.
