Posted on 04/07/2019 4:39:24 AM PDT by vannrox
Not sure where to put this one, it could go in so many different sub-forums, so I'll just put it here in 'General'.
The other day my laptop crashed and burned. Not sure what happened, but I think the motherboard fried. I managed to get it working enough to attach an external hard drive and mirror off all the data files. Most of it I already had backed up, but I just wanted to get the most recent data. Because many of my keyboard keys were not working I had to use some more global commands to get all the data. Last Sunday I went out and bought a new laptop. I wasn't too mad because my old laptop was 4+ years old and had given me pretty good service. I got the new laptop set up, installed all the software and copied all the data from my old laptop (now on my external HD) over to my new computer. Everything was working great, no problems.
So last night I was busy canning some spicy pickles and eggs and decided to listen to some music from my new machine. I clicked on my normal music directories and all these weird files showed up. At first I just ignored them thinking I would just go back and clean them out later. There were a bunch of them, hundreds even. I was searching for a particular song I wanted to listen to, but all these extraneous files kept getting in the way. What are these files???
The new files were .MP3 files and they had titles like 170901_1554. Always 6 digits with an underscore and then 4 more digits. Okay, so it's an .MP3 file, so let's play it and see what it is, right?
So, I played one of the files. ............ It's a recording of ME, in a conversation I was having with someone else. I hadn't recorded that conversation. So then I listened to a whole bunch of these files, and they were all recordings of conversations. Hundreds of conversations!! Me talking with my wife, me talking with a business colleague...even one of me talking to my dogs! Some of them were just 2-3 minutes long. Some of them were 45 minutes long. Hundreds and hundreds of recorded audio of conversations. WTF??? Like seriously...W...T...F??????
Now, I'm pretty computer saavy (lord knows, I work in the industry) so I'm pretty good about turning stuff off. When I set up a computer I spend hours turning off all the bloatware, all the recording and video. I'm kind of obsessive about turning off all the "big brother" stuff, and I frequently check to make sure updates don't add or turn something back on again. I run pretty damn good security on my machines too. That laptop was tight as a drum...or so I thought. Yet, there are hours and hours of conversations recorded on it. Probably hundreds of hours!!!! Absolutely unbelievable!
I have no idea what software recorded these files. I have no idea what triggered them to be recorded. I equally have no idea what or whom they were sent to. The good news is, there wasn't much of anything particularly notable in the recordings, but the simple fact they exist at all is a SERIOUS WTF moment!!!
Pretty scary!! Pretty scary that something like this could happen to someone like me, and it makes me wonder how much other EVIL-WARE is out there on other people's machines, recording everything they're doing!!
Bkmrk.
You live in a communist country.
Oh, I yeah, I forgot about this guy.
2019 - Start with the year. The reason for this becomes clear later, when you try to sort your files. They used a two-digit year. Four-digit is better, if you might be using dates from more than one century.
04 - Next is the month.
07 - Day
0857 - military time.
8:57 AM on April 7, 2019 becomes 201904070857. You can insert spaces and punctuation marks to make it more visually appealing. If you need to be more precise, you can add two digits to the end for seconds.
What’s the Windows timestamp on these file like 170901_1554?
Yes, the files were on his old computer. He said so. The conversations were not Skype calls. They were conversations he had around the house.
Anyone who tapes my computer sounds will have hours and hours of off-key humming, interspersed by cursing out Bill Gates.
~~~
That was my first thought, but the surveilance software sounds like it’s smart enough to recognize voice over mundane sounds only to make a file only write audio files after conversations appear to stop, which is why some were brief and some were long. Sorta like how a security DVR only writes a video file when motion has been discerned and newer ones have software to not count mundane things like blowing leaves as movement. So if you got phone call, the laptop’s mic would pick up your speech, even if you were in an adjacent room with a door open.
My guess would be that it wrote the files and hid them as system files or even in a hidden folder, and was supposed to delete them after uploading, and it failed to delete.
The OP posted it properly. The link is where it should be. The content of the article is where it should be. The OP’s comment about the article is where it should be. At no point did I think this was original content from vannrox.
My brother worked (Electronics Engineer) for a huge electronics company in Texas that developed chips for computers. Major client was the gubmint. In the late 70’s through most of the 80’s he kept telling me he couldn’t tell me what he did. In the late 80’s he finally told me that they had developed hardware to collect all electronic and voice communications of everyone in the U.S. going back into the late 70’s. Looks like they are collecting conversations in our homes. Doesn’t surprise me a bit. Your television speakers can do this when the TV isn’t on. Why do you think they just built the HUGE data storage facility out west? May be just lucky that the transfer accidentally exposed this data.
There is no way this is a “government agency surveillance” unless it was Deputy Barney Fife.
I would think the most likely explanation is that the computer had a dictation recording app that was set to auto-record.
Have you recently been involved in...
1. A divorce
2. A large insurance claim, e.g. personal injury
....?
What brand is your new perp computer..?
Are you SerpentZA? Are you Laioai86..?
If you are, I would understand this incident.
Mark
Cool. Sounds like a fun project. I used to live to do parsing ages ago and loved it. I’ll give it a try after church.
Open the pod bay doors HAL.
A FReeper posted recently.......
He had turned off his computer....he and his wife then chatted about purchasing a new item for the house.
When he turned the computer back on........ads for the item they talked about popped up.
Conspiratorial NutJob B U M P !!
At no point in history has any government ever wanted its people to be defenseless for any good reason ~ nully's son
Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping!
To get onto The Nut-job Conspiracy Theory Ping List you must threaten to report me to the Mods if I don't add you to the list...
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.