I-Team: Your phone might be secretly recording you with your consent
BOSTON - There are all kinds of laws to protect our privacy but there's a good chance you may be opening the door to let strangers in on the private details of your life all through your phone.
There are plenty of devices we know are listening to us, like Amazon Alexa, but your phone could also be spying on you.
Cyber security expert Peter Tran says the information is likely being collected through apps on your device.
"It's scary," Tran told WBZ-TV. "It's really scary, the potential capabilities of any of these apps that are out there."
Here's how it works.
When you download an app, some will usually ask for permission to access the microphone and camera on your phone, if you allow it.
"Most apps will ask you only one time," Tran explained. "And normally, you're like I need to use it, 'okay', 'okay', 'okay' and it never comes up again."
That means every time you open the app, anything you say or search could be recorded, collected and sold to advertisers.
Tran showed WBZ just how easy it is to eavesdrop. He and his consultants created a fake travel app that looks exactly like an app you might download on your phone.
On the other end was Taylor Puckett, a security analyst from Tennessee. He made the app in just a weekend and he was able to listen in on an entire conversation between me and Tran.
Puckett said it was easy to record 30-second files of the conversation and store them on his computer. He admits there could be more sinister uses for the files beyond advertising.
"I can collect personal information that you would be sharing in your own home that you wouldn't know that I would have access to. I could use it to spy on people. Passwords, phone numbers, addresses, children's names. You name it. Anything that you discuss you could grab," he told WBZ.
Thankfully, the fix is pretty easy.
"Go into your settings. Make sure that your apps do not have access to your microphone or camera," Tran said.