Scientists listened to these Caribbean fish for over 2,000 hours. Breakthroughs, discoveries, and DIY tips sent every weekday. The red hind grouper () is big on grunting. After analyzing over 2,000 hours of ocean acoustic recordings gathered over 12 years, marine biologists say that groupers convey specific messages to one another about courtship and territory with their grunts. And with the help of an advanced machine-learning tool, researchers now believe the observational approach detailed in a study published in the can help other scientists to better monitor fish populations, as well as improve ongoing conservation efforts for threatened species.

If you're a smartphone owner--and chances are that's everyone reading this--you've probably encountered an eerie, but all too common scenario: One day you're talking about a random topic while your phone is next to you and the following day you notice ads start popping up related to that same topic. How do these ads know what you were talking about? Your smartphone may be the culprit. Every smartphone has its built-in microphone constantly turned on in order for the virtual assistant to hear your voice commands. So, could it be that these devices are also secretly eavesdropping on your conversations in order to serve you ads? Here's everything you need to know, plus a simple test to find out.

If you're a smartphone owner--and chances are that's everyone reading this--you've probably encountered an eerie, but all too common scenario: One day you're talking about a random topic while your phone is next to you and the following day you notice ads start popping up related to that same topic. How do these ads know what you were talking about? Your smartphone may be the culprit. Every smartphone has its built-in microphone constantly turned on in order for the virtual assistant to hear your voice commands. So, could it be that these devices are also secretly eavesdropping on your conversations in order to serve you ads? Here's everything you need to know, plus a simple test to find out.

Apple has agreed to pay 95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing the privacy-minded company of deploying its virtual assistant Siri to eavesdrop on people using its iPhone and other trendy devices. The proposed settlement filed Tuesday in an Oakland, California, federal court would resolve a 5-year-old lawsuit revolving around allegations that Apple surreptitiously activated Siri to record conversations through iPhones and other devices equipped with the virtual assistant for more than a decade. The alleged recordings occurred even when people didn't seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, "Hey, Siri." Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted. The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple's long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers -- a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve "a fundamental human right."

If you've ever got an advert on social media for something you were just talking about, it might be more than an uncanny coincidence. Thanks to virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa, your smartphone isconstantly listening to everything you say. Worryingly, as long as you have consented to the terms and conditions, there is nothing illegal about using that data to bombard you with hyper-specific adverts. Luckily, experts at NordVPN have devised a simple test to work out if your phone is really eavesdropping on your conversations. By deliberately discussing random topics within earshot of your phone, you can see how long it takes for these subjects to appear in your social media feeds.

Semantic communication is a new paradigm that considers the meaning of transmitted information to optimize communication. One possible application is the remote monitoring of a process under communication costs: scheduling updates based on semantic considerations can significantly reduce transmission frequency while maintaining high-quality tracking performance. However, semantic scheduling also opens a timing-based side-channel that an eavesdropper may exploit to obtain information about the state of the remote process, even if the content of updates is perfectly secure. In this work, we study an eavesdropping attack against pull-based semantic scheduling for the tracking of remote Markov processes. We provide a theoretical framework for defining the effectiveness of the attack and of possible countermeasures, as well as a practical heuristic that can provide a balance between the performance gains offered by semantic communication and the information leakage.

We propose a cluster-based method to detect and locate eavesdropping events in optical line systems characterized by small power losses. Our findings indicate that detecting such subtle losses from eavesdropping can be accomplished solely through optical performance monitoring (OPM) data collected at the receiver. On the other hand, the localization of such events can be effectively achieved by leveraging in-line OPM data.

Yet another smartphone side-channel attack: “EarSpy: Spying Caller Speech and Identity through Tiny Vibrations of Smartphone Ear Speakers“: Abstract: Eavesdropping from the user’s smartphone is a well-known threat to the user’s safety and privacy. Existing studies show that loudspeaker reverberation can inject speech into motion sensor readings, leading to speech eavesdropping. While more devastating attacks on ear speakers, which produce much smaller scale vibrations, were believed impossible to eavesdrop with zero-permission motion sensors. In this work, we revisit this important line of reach. We explore recent trends in smartphone manufacturers that include extra/powerful speakers in place of small ear speakers, and demonstrate the feasibility of using motion sensors to capture such tiny speech vibrations. We investigate the impacts of these new ear speakers on built-in motion sensors and examine the potential to elicit private speech information from the minute vibrations. Our designed system ...

The list of companies that enlist human workers to listen in on your personal conversations just won't quit growing. According to an investigation by Motherboard, Microsoft-owned Skype has been listening to audio of users speaking to one another via its translation service, which uses AI to convert language in nearly real-time. While Skype states that it may analyze audio of phone calls conducted through the service to improve its abilities, it has never explicitly stated that humans would be doing that work. Skype conversations are being recorded and analyzed by Microsoft contractors. The company says it is meant to improve its translation service.

Not all voice assistants can handle the same requests. We put Siri, Alexa and Google to the test. As privacy concerns loom large over smart speakers, a new investigation has found that Google's smart speakers might infringe on individual privacy more than buyers realize. Even when Google Home smart speakers aren't activated, the speakers are eavesdropping closely, often to private, intimate conversations, a report by Dutch broadcaster VRT has uncovered. Recordings found by VRT contain startling content: Couples' quarrels that may have potentially resulted in domestic violence, explicit conversations in the bedroom, men searching for pornography, confidential business calls, and talks with children.