Many smartphone users in India have concerns over the privacy of their conversations with their family and friends. Especially after they’ve noticed that ads have appeared in their feeds after having a voice conversation.
According to a recent study conducted by community social media platform, LocalCircles, 1 in 2 users in India have observed instances where they’ve seen ads based on a conversation they had with one of their contacts.
Almost 53% of 8,000 respondents have said that they’ve seen instances in the past 12 months of seeing related ads after a phone call. The other half of the respondents to the question have neither seen such instances on their smartphones.
The survey shows that 9% of respondents out of approximate 9,000 have given permission to all their apps to access the microphone. Users who have given apps access to the microphone for audio and video calls and to post to social media constitute 11%.
The survey received responses from more than 38,000 LocalCircle users from across the country. It consisted of three major questions. The first was whether or not users had experienced seeing ads about products they’ve spoken of on a call. More specifically, in the past 12 months. The second question gauged users' knowledge of how many apps had access to their microphones. The company was also interested in knowing which apps had access to the contacts list.
Ads, cookies and trackers
Google has become smarter at displaying the right ads at the right time. I have personally experienced a time when I saw an ad about a product that I spoke about. But I may have also searched for the product on Google before, or may have searched it on e-commerce sites. Many websites use cookies and trackers to know the users who visit their pages and to collect information about the interests of a user.
Unknowingly, while browsing the net there may be instances where some of the products would have been captured by these trackers. Google Ads is known to provide ads according to the person’s interest or will display something that is close to the target audience.
While it will be interesting how this latest report will shape the discussion on privacy in the country, mobile operating systems like iOS and Android have ways for consumers to track apps actively using their microphones and camera.
On Android devices, users will see either a camera icon or microphone icon in the notification bar. On iOS devices, you’ll see an orange dot or green dot just above the network bars. Orange indicates access to the microphone while green is for the camera. If any of these icons are visible when you’re not using the camera or on a voice call, then you can tap on them to see which app is accessing them.
