By Ata Ikkideh
Something rather disturbing happened to me yesterday, and I am still trying to make sense of it.
Two weeks ago, I walked into a diagnostic centre to have my PSA checked, the blood test commonly used in screening for prostate cancer. I had the test last year, again at the beginning of this year, and once more two weeks ago. My brother-in-law died earlier this year from prostate cancer. A close lifelong friend also died last month from the same disease. If you are a man between 45 and 70, please take your regular check-ups seriously. There are some battles in life that are better fought before they begin.
Anyway, there I was yesterday, sitting with the doctor, discussing my PSA results and some other tests. My phone was switched on, lying on the doctor’s table. At some point, our conversation drifted to ulcers because he told me the H.pylori results came back negative. I told the doctor about my experience with H. pylori, a bacterium associated with peptic ulcers and other serious stomach complications. I explained that, in my own case, I eventually had emergency surgery to remove a tumour about the size of an orange.
The doctor then gave me a fairly detailed lecture about H. pylori, the damage it can cause to the stomach lining, and the complications that can arise if the infection is not properly treated. We talked, we shook hands, and I left clutching my test results.
Then came the strange part.
This morning, I picked up my phone, opened Facebook and began seeing advertisements for an Indian tea claiming to fight H. pylori. I thought little of it. Then I started noticing more advertisements and videos concerning H. pylori, ulcers and the same tea.
Still, I did not immediately connect the dots.
Until I received a video that was giving me, almost point for point, the same explanation the doctor had given me only the previous day about H. pylori, the stomach lining, ulcers, tumours and cancer. That was when I stopped. What on earth is going on?
I cannot prove that my phone listened to that conversation. I cannot prove that it recorded anything. And I certainly do not want to make an accusation without evidence. But the coincidence was so extraordinary that it made me sit back and ask a question that I suspect millions of people have asked themselves: Is my phone listening to me?
Because if it is, this is no longer merely a question about advertising. It is a question about privacy.
Think about it. We carry these devices everywhere. From the moment we wake up until the moment we go to bed, they are beside us. We use them for telephone calls, private conversations, business meetings, banking, correspondence and increasingly sensitive personal matters. They know where we are, who we communicate with, what we search for, what we watch, what we buy and, in many cases, what we say to them.
Who exactly is receiving all this information? And is everything really about selling us something?
What happens when the conversation is not about H. pylori or Indian tea, but about a confidential business transaction? A classified government meeting? A sensitive security operation? A private family matter? Who is listening then? Where does that information go? Who stores it? Who can access it?
We used to worry about the so called deep state. Perhaps we should now start worrying about something else: the deep companies, enormous technology corporations whose systems have become so deeply embedded in our lives that we sometimes no longer know where our private lives end and their digital machinery begins.
And before anybody tells me that this is simply paranoia, let me make myself clear: I am not claiming that my phone recorded yesterday’s conversation. I am saying that what happened was sufficiently uncanny to make me seriously question what these devices are capable of doing and what information they are collecting.
The governments of this world will have to step in at some point. This is high level espionage type intrusion into our personal lives.
There must be a way to shut down whatever mode permits unnecessary access to the microphone. I want to know exactly how. If somebody knows how to disable every such function on an iPhone, please tell me. I am beginning to contemplate something I never imagined I would contemplate in the twenty-first century: throwing away this extraordinarily intelligent piece of technology and buying myself a Nokia 105.
I hear even switching off one’s phone doesn’t help. It keeps listening. My phone has become my enemy.
Ikkideh lives in London
