A hot potato: For almost as long as we’ve had smartphones, there has been the belief that they surreptitiously listen to our spoken conversations to serve us targeted ads; most people have experienced seeing an ad on Facebook for something they were recently talking about. It’s always been claimed that this type of privacy invasion doesn’t happen. However, a marketing agency, whose clients included Facebook and Google, has admitted to using an “Active Listening” feature that eavesdrops on conversations via phone mics to gather data.

A pitch deck from Cox Media Group (CMG), seen by 404 Media, states that the marketing firm uses its AI-powered Active Listening software to capture real-time data by listening to phone users’ conversations. The slide adds that advertising clients can pair the gathered voice data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers.

Android users have been warned that a dangerous new hack attack uses optical character recognition to grab passphrases from your smartphone.

Why do we take so many selfies? Because we are afraid of dying, say psychologists.

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Many of us have phones filled with selfies documenting everything from holidays to duvet days.

But what’s behind the modern fascination with taking photos of ourselves?

Psychologists have come up with a rather morbid answer: fear of dying.

Researchers from Tel Aviv University in Israel quizzed 100 students on the motivations behind their selfie-taking.