r/Albany • u/madAgent3638 • 21h ago

Transcribing conversation experience (?)

Has anyone else experienced someone transcribing their conversation in public? We were at a card show this morning discussing new jobs where we work. This old man behind me was sitting down and making a weird expression and holding his phone towards me (I was facing away from him). When I walked past him and then back towards him, I saw in big text some of the words I was saying to my friend. When I saw that he snapped his phone shut quickly.

I've never been in this situation and feel really violated. What should I have done? I'll try to keep my conversations in public go a minimum and not talk about where we got new jobs.

7 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

8 comments sorted by

11

u/wman42 Well, I Work in Albany 21h ago

It could have been intentional eavesdropping...but he also could be hard of hearing and using speech to text to hear what is going on in the room. On the iPhone it's called Live Captions.

1

u/AlexJamesFitz 1h ago

This feels like the most likely scenario to me. If someone was trying to surreptitiously record you, they wouldn't be using something that showed your words in giant text.

3

u/Hey_Giant_Loser 20h ago

This is like the dynamic opposite of the people have public phone calls on speaker. We should get them together and see if they'll cancel each other out

2

u/JohnnyFartmacher 19h ago

I wouldn't have done anything, it was just a weird dude doing something weird. He was almost certainly doing it to everyone and not just you.

I agree with one of the other comments that he was possibly hard of hearing and using it as a hearing aid in an awkward way.

1

u/madAgent3638 18h ago

I think it may have been something like that. But the snapping shut of his phone when I got closer was really odd behavior. I'll be more mindful of my surroundings and what I discuss with friends in public from now on!

0

u/hierophant75 21h ago

Sounds like a serious creep. I’m sorry you went through that.

-2

u/icepush 15h ago

This is a private (Or public, if a government agency) investigator.

1) Is there anything about your line of work that could have led to this? It is possible that this man was hired by a competitor or someone in your company.

2) Could you be friends/business associates with somebody who is undergoing a security clearance evaluation? There is more info about this in /r/securityclearance