{"id":35684,"date":"2022-04-26T16:03:55","date_gmt":"2022-04-26T20:03:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=35684"},"modified":"2022-05-09T15:44:29","modified_gmt":"2022-05-09T19:44:29","slug":"video-conferencing-apps-send-audio-when-muted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2022\/04\/26\/video-conferencing-apps-send-audio-when-muted\/","title":{"rendered":"Video Conferencing Apps Send Audio When Muted"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/youre-muted-or-are-you-videoconferencing-apps-may-listen-even-when-mic-is-off\/\">Jason Daley<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/wiscprivacy.com\/papers\/vca_mute.pdf\">PDF<\/a>, via <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/news\/muting-your-mic-doesnt-stop-big-tech-recording-your-audio\">Tristan Greene<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/news.wisc.edu\/youre-muted-or-are-you-videoconferencing-apps-may-listen-even-when-mic-is-off\/\">\n<p>They used runtime binary analysis tools to trace raw audio in popular videoconferencing applications as the audio traveled from the app to the computer audio driver and then to the network while the app was muted.<\/p>\n<p>They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio data while mute is activated, with one popular app gathering information and delivering data to its server at the same rate regardless of whether the microphone is muted or not.<\/p>\n<p>The researchers then decided to see if they could use data collected on mute from that app to infer the types of activities taking place in the background. Using machine learning algorithms, they trained an activity classifier using audio from YouTube videos representing six common background activities, including cooking and eating, playing music, typing and cleaning. Applying the classifier to the type of telemetry packets the app was sending, the team could identify the background activity with an average of 82% accuracy.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2015\/06\/04\/micro-snitch-1-0\/\">Micro Snitch 1.0<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n<p id=\"video-conferencing-apps-send-audio-when-muted-update-2022-04-27\">Update (2022-04-27): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=31017098\">Hacker News<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"video-conferencing-apps-send-audio-when-muted-update-2022-04-29\">Update (2022-04-29): See also: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.schneier.com\/blog\/archives\/2022\/04\/video-conferencing-apps-sometimes-ignore-the-mute-button.html\">Bruce Schneier<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n<p id=\"video-conferencing-apps-send-audio-when-muted-update-2022-05-09\">Update (2022-05-09): <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RogueAmoeba\/status\/1521517922602074112\">Rogue Amoeba<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote cite=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RogueAmoeba\/status\/1521517922602074112\">\n<p>With <a href=\"https:\/\/rogueamoeba.com\/soundsource\/\">SoundSource&rsquo;s<\/a> Input muting, you can be certain your mic is muted.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n<p>Previously:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2020\/04\/13\/soundsource-from-rogue-amoeba-sponsor\/\">SoundSource From Rogue Amoeba (Sponsor)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jason Daley (PDF, via Tristan Greene): They used runtime binary analysis tools to trace raw audio in popular videoconferencing applications as the audio traveled from the app to the computer audio driver and then to the network while the app was muted. They found that all of the apps they tested occasionally gather raw audio [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"2022-04-26T20:03:58Z","apple_news_api_id":"921a3591-2a83-44b0-ba83-43f90022cccd","apple_news_api_modified_at":"2022-05-09T19:44:38Z","apple_news_api_revision":"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAg==","apple_news_api_share_url":"https:\/\/apple.news\/Akho1kSqDRLC6g0P5ACLMzQ","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[95,1801,30,32,2129,355,1500,1937,2196,1839],"class_list":["post-35684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-audio","tag-google-meet","tag-mac","tag-macapp","tag-microsoft-teams","tag-privacy","tag-slack","tag-soundsource","tag-webex","tag-zoom"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35684"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35684\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35813,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35684\/revisions\/35813"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}