According to a new study, pushing the mute button on popular video conferencing apps does not always work as expected.
Video Conferencing Apps Record All of That Data Even if You Mute Your Audio: Study
A new study conducted by a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the Loyola University in Chicago revealed that pushing the mute button on popular video conferencing apps (VCA) does not always work as expected, noting that the mute feature does not prevent audio from being sent to the apps' servers, either continuously or periodically.
The study, as reported by Digital Information World, went beyond simply validating that VCA did this, and instead attempted to determine how much audio data they could capture if their in-app mute buttons were activated.
It is also worth noting that one of the apps they tested ended up capturing all of your raw audio data if you were muted, and that all of the software they tested recorded at least some of your audio regardless of whether you had your mic switched on or not in the app.
Various machine learning models were tested in this study, and the results all showed that big tech does not care as much about user privacy as they attempt to make people believe. Digital Information World said that what's more disturbing is that people have no idea what they're trying to do with this data.
It's likely that it's being used to improve their services, which they shouldn't be able to do without first gaining customer approval.
How Can You Prevent VCA From Recording You?
Double muting is the best method to prevent tech firms from recording you as this will theoretically prevent any audio from accessing your system in the first place.
By muting your audio on your system and then muting it again within the app, you can create a pretty secure environment and prevent VCA from accessing your data.
With remote work continuing to be extremely popular around the world, several big tech companies are attempting to capitalize on this by capturing as much data as possible through their apps.
As a result, users must remain watchful at all times, yet despite this, only a small percentage of them are taking the essential precautions to protect their privacy.
This could lead to a slew of new issues with user privacy and data usage in general, Digital Information World noted.
More Details on the Study
According to Bleeping Computer, the study was done in two parts.
For the first part, the team conducted a user survey, in which 223 VCA users were asked how they understood the mute button's function and how they thought it should manage audio data.
While the participants were split on whether chat apps should be allowed to access their microphones while muted, the majority agreed that the apps should not be able to gather data while muted.
For the second part, the researchers looked into how the mute button works in a variety of popular apps, establishing what kind of data is captured and whether it can reveal personal information.
The researchers' findings will be presented at the Privacy Enhancing Technologies Symposium in July.
