How to Make Sure Your Phone Isn’t Secretly Listening to You

It's not new info, and maybe you've even rationalized it all away. Your phone and other smart devices listen to you, track your movements, and maybe even watch you.

Do you remember that time you were talking about what to have for dinner and narrowed it down to pizza or burgers?

The next day, you're online, and pizza restaurants and the best cheeseburgers in town keep popping up.

These devices hear voice commands from us as we chitchat, even when it's an innocent conversation with a friend about fashion or the latest TV shows you're streaming.

Or what about when you were searching car dealerships online, and voila, those ads started popping up for days?

Oh, and what about this one?

You're out of town for a few days, and once you're home, information about the area you were just visiting continues, even if you didn't search for anything.

According to Popular Science, your device is doing exactly what it's supposed to do. It's a smart device, after all, and sometimes it's super helpful.

SMARTPHONES/TABLETS

Turn off Your Tracking

According to Martha Stewart magazine, when you want your phone to stop tracking your movements, simply turn it off. You can always turn it back on if you want the GPS or help finding the parking garage where your car is.

Go to settings, privacy, tracking, and toggle it off.

When you want your smartphone to start collecting data again, you just toggle it back on.

Turn off Your Microphone

Go to settings, privacy, microphone, and toggle it off.

When you're ready for Siri or apps like Shazam to work again, you'll need to turn the microphone back on.

Turn off Your Camera

Go to settings, privacy, camera, and toggle it off. 

Again, if you're using your devices for a Zoom meeting, for example, you'll need to turn the camera back on.

AT HOME DEVICES

Amazon Alexa and Google Home are meant to listen to you. Their sole purpose is to help you do, find, and share whatever you need. However, according to Martha Stewart, if you want a break, here's what you need to do.

Alexa

Go to your online account and settings page, manage your home device history, or manage your data.

Google Home

Go to your online account page, data and privacy, web and app activity, and toggle off the option to include voice and audio activity.

Apple HomePod

Go to your account page, speaker, listening to Siri choices according to Popular Science.

We've all, for the most part, adapted to the fact that our smart devices listening or tracking us is part of their charm, but it's nice to know we can disconnect, too.