Crimes of the Cubicle: Inexcusable activities at your desk (Salary.com)

t’s your cubicle. You even have a nameplate. So it’s your personal space, right? Not really. It’s more like a seat at the dinner table than a room in the house.

In other words, any sense of privacy is an illusion. Treat your office space with respect if you want to be taken seriously in the workplace. 

You want to keep your job? 

Avoid doing any of these inexcusable activities at your desk.

Personal grooming

As annoying as that little snag in your fingernail or chip in your polish may be, resist the temptation for an on-the-spot fix. Oh sure, it will just take a moment. But before you know it, you've filed the rest of your nails and touched up your toes, much to the dismay of anyone within range of the grating sounds and noxious fumes.

Also, consider that every snip of the nail clipper will generate a clipping that may descend gently into your trashcan -- or alternately fly into office space with your DNA affixed to it.

Shaving? Tweezing? Dental floss? Eww. If you wouldn't do it in front of your boss, don't do it at your desk

Assembling sandwiches

Unless you actually work on an assembly line, there's no excuse for assembling sandwiches or other meals at your desk.

You make your kids pack their school lunches the night before, right? There's a reason. No one needs to watch (or smell) you smear mustard on naked bread and then pile on the deli meat just so.

Worse yet, they might ask you if you have any extra, and do you really want to share your extra lean turkey pastrami with Bob from accounting?

Excessive decorating

Yes, you practically live at your desk. But in reality, you don’t.

So skip the over-the-top seasonal decorations like the bobble head pumpkin man with glowing eyes and a menacing cackle, the musical snow globe that plays "The 12 Days of Christmas" any time someone walks by, your motivational "Valentine's Day Suck" poster... 

They'll work better as home décor -- or on the bargain table of your next garage sale.

Framed college diploma or professional awards? Yes. Stuffed tiger mascot that roars when you squeeze its big toe? Not so much.

Undressing the part

If the shoes look good but pinch your toes, too bad. You put them on today. And they're staying there until you get back home ... or at least to your car.

Same with the itchy wool jacket. Yes, you can toss it back on in time for your afternoon meeting. But what if your boss peeks in to introduce a new hire and you're sitting there in a cloud of foot odor and perspiration? Highly unprofessional.

If you've planned ahead and dressed with office-appropriate layering, go ahead and hang up the jacket until the meeting. But the shoes? Don't even think about it.

Hitting the marketplace

Buying or selling in the office place is bad form. That means no checking on how your old baseball cards are faring on eBay and no hunting down the best deal on snow tires from your office chair.

If you're a good employee, you're meticulous about details and any "quick check" would certainly turn into a comprehensive search on company time. Or worse, you'd be time crunched to make a hasty regrettable decision (how's that Toothpick of the Month Club working out for ya?).

Better to save the online shopping and eBaying for the middle of the night, where it belongs.

Checking your winks

Yes, the blonde snowboarding enthusiast on that online dating site is just your type. Did she respond to that email you sent? Did she notice the dashing new profile photo you posted of you standing next to that random sports car?

Three words: Love is patient. She can wait. You can wait. If there's going to be magic, it will still be waiting on your home computer tonight after work.

Besides, she might want to talk on the phone, and then you'd have to resort to yet another faux pas…Talking in Code.

Talking too loud, too soft or in code

The only thing more annoying than hearing co-workers' loud telephone conversations is hearing their whispered conversations. And the only thing worse than the dramatic whisper is Code Talk. You know, those careful conversations that begin with, "I really can't talk about it right now, but..." Stop it. Stop right there. Before the "but."

There will be no word substitution or pointed innuendo. No saying "the situation we talked about" which means "my coworker who wears that really nasty cologne." Do not attempt to describe last night's date without actually using the word "date." Save the play-by-play for later when you can use complete sentences.

Moping around

OK, Snowboard Girl was The One. You knew it. Your friends knew it. But she somehow missed out on that whole love vibe. So now your life is basically over, and you have no one with whom to deflect Aunt Margaret's sympathy at the family Christmas dinner.

Psssst. That’s personal. You’re at work. If you feel emotional, it’s better to sniffle in Stall #3 than at your desk. And if you focus on today’s tasks instead of moping over The One, you’re not only modeling professionalism, you will actually heal faster.

Sending self portraits

You would never make a personal call at your desk where everyone can overhear you. (Good for you!) But what about sending a quick photo of yourself at the new job with your cell phone camera?

Of course you need to get a decent picture first. No, not that one. It makes your nose look big. If you hold your arm out a little further .... Maybe put the phone on the edge of your desk, angle your face toward the computer and snap the shot with your right foot...

The only ones who take a good cell phone photo on the first shot are the ones who do it way too much. This isn't office appropriate. Send a quick text message instead.

Any regrets, Edward Snowden? "I'd have come forward sooner" (ZDNet)

Summary:The former NSA contractor turned whistleblower said during a Reddit question-and-answer session that the leaks have also improved security and encryption in Silicon Valley.

Edward Snowden answers questions on Reddit (Image: Imgur/Reddit)

Edward Snowden has just one regret.

It's not that he threw Obama's second term in office under the bus by disclosing the vast surveillance by the National Security Agency. Nor did he regret that he condemned himself to the bowels of Russia. (He rightfully pointed out the weather in Moscow has been "warmer than the east coast" this past week, where temperatures have been close to zero.)

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It was that he didn't "come forward sooner" with what he knew.

Journalist Glenn Greenwald and filmmaker Laura Poitras, and former NSA contractor turned whistleblower Edward Snowdenanswered questions from the Reddit community on Monday in an hour-long "ask me anything."

The question-and-answer session comes hours before the Poitras documentary, "Citizenfour," broadcasts on HBO. The film, which documents the first few days the whistleblower goes on the run in Hong Kong and the immediate aftermath of the leaks, won an Oscar on Sunday for best documentary feature.

Here are select highlights from the event, edited for clarity:

Snowden, months after he was granted political asylum in Russia, asked the country's president Vladimir Putin if his government spies on its citizens. What proof do we have that Putin is being honest?

Snowden: "There's not, and that's part of the problem world-wide. We can't just reform the laws in one country, wipe our hands, and call it a day. We have to ensure that our rights aren't just being protected by letters on a sheet of paper somewhere, or those protections will evaporate the minute our communications get routed across a border. The only way to ensure the human rights of citizens around the world are being respected in the digital realm is to enforce them through systems and standards rather than policies and procedures."

Any hope that the success of "Citizenfour"will help repatriate Snowden back to the US, or will the government continue to press for his extradition and detention?

Greenwald: "Under the Espionage Act [which Snowden has been charged under], Snowden would be barred even from raising a defense of justification. The courts would not allow it. So he'd be barred from raising the defense [government officials and journalists] keep saying he should come back and raise."

What do you think about the aftermath of the revelations? Has the world changed that much in the wake of the leaks?

Snowden: "Many of the changes that are happening are invisible because they're happening at the engineering level. Google encrypted the backhaul communications between their data centers to prevent passive monitoring. Apple was the first forward with a full disk encryption-by-default smartphone (kudos!).

The biggest change has been in awareness. Before 2013, if you said the NSA was making records of everybody's phone calls and the [British] GCHQ was monitoring lawyers and journalists, people raised eyebrows and called you a conspiracy theorist. Those days are over."

Do you have any regrets?

Snowden: "I would have come forward sooner... [But] these programs would have been a little less entrenched, and those abusing them would have felt a little less familiar with and accustomed to the exercise of those powers. This is something we see in almost every sector of government, not just in the national security space, but it's very important. Once you grant the government some new power or authority, it becomes exponentially more difficult to roll it back."

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Laura Poitras was for a while, despite being a US citizen, detained at the US border on arrival. She previously said she now lives in Berlin, where privacy is enshrined into German law and society. Is she still detained for extra screening when she flies home?

Poitras: "The detentions have thankfully stopped, at least for now. Starting in 2006, after I came back from making a film about Iraq's first election, I was stopped and detained at the US border over forty times, often times for hours. After I went public with my experiences (Glenn broke the story in 2012), the harassment stopped. Unfortunately there are countless others who aren't so lucky."

How do you all collaborate? I saw in the film that you used certain privacy tools to encrypt the document archives.

Poitras: "It would have been impossible for us to work on the NSA stories and make "Citizenfour" without many encryption tools that allowed us to communicate more securely. In fact, in the credits we thank several free software projects for making it all possible. I can't really get into our specific security process, but on the The Intercept's security experts, Micah Lee, wrote a great post about helping Glenn and I when we first got in contact with Snowden.

It's definitely important that we support these tools so the creators can make them easier to use. They are incredibly underfunded for how important they are. You can donate to Tails, Tor and a few other projects at the Freedom of the Press Foundation."

Does Edward Snowden work for the Russian intelligence agencies, as some claim he is?

Snowden: "Of course not... If I were a spy for the Russians, why the hell was I trapped in any airport for a month? I would have gotten a parade and a medal instead.

At this point, I think the reason I get away with it is because of my public profile. What can they really do to me? If I show up with broken fingers, everybody will know what happened."

What's the best way to make NSA surveillance an issue in the 2016 presidential election?

Greenwald: "The key tactic [those in Washington DC] use to make uncomfortable issues disappear is bipartisan consensus... The problem is that the leadership of both parties, as usual, are in full agreement: they love NSA mass surveillance. So that has blocked it from receiving more debate. That NSA program was ultimately saved by the unholy trinity of Obama, Nancy Pelosi and John Bohener, who worked together to defeat the Amash/Conyers bill [the first amendment in Congress to attempt to address the NSA's surveillance powers in the wake of the leaks]."

10 best antimalware products of 2014 (TechRepublic)

AV-TEST Institute announced its 2014 Best Antimalware product awards. The categories are Best Protection, Performance, Usability, Repair, and Android Security. 

About the 2014 AV-TEST Award

"AV-TEST recognizes security products for consumers and corporate users that achieved the highest performance in our laboratory tests during 2014," announces Andreas Marx, co-CEO with Guido Habicht. "Ten awards are given in the areas of Windows desktop, Windows clients, Android security, and Windows system repair."

Marx explains that AV-TEST Institute created the awards to spur manufacturers to greater innovation in protecting computing equipment from internet threats. "With the presentation of an award, AV-TEST honors effective security products that represent successful antimalware functionality," adds Marx. "The awards also help the public gain greater familiarity with the manufacturers and their products."

The AV-TEST Awards are presented annually (an Android award was added in 2014) following a full year of testing. The testing falls into four categories: Protection, Usability, Performance Testing, and Repair.

Protection: This is considered the most important category by AV-TEST. The researchers subject each antimalware program to known online threats, zero-day malware attacks from the internet, as well as accessing known malicious websites or emails to test whether protection products ward off malware.

Usability: AV-TEST personnel note any adverse effects the antimalware under observation places on the test computer or user. For example:

• computers slowing down when the antimalware program is operational;
• false positives while scanning more than 400,000 benign applications; or
• blocking the installation of software.

Performance Testing: Researchers at AV-TEST subject each antimalware product to 13 user actions and measure how the antimalware application affects the operating system's performance. Some examples include:

• downloading various files from the internet;
• copying files locally and through the network; and
• using programs such as Word or Excel.

Repair: Marx mentions there is no such thing as a perfect antimalware program, nor an error-free user, meaning infections will occur. AV-TEST researchers infect test systems with "in the wild" malware, grading how well the antimalware product being tested removes the offending malware and repairs the system.

And the winners are...

The 2014 AV-TEST Awards for consumer security solutions:

• Best protection - Trend Micro Internet Security
• Best performance - Kaspersky Lab Internet Security
• Best usability - Avira AntiVirus Pro

The 2014 AV-TEST Awards for corporate security solutions:

• Best protection - F-Secure Client Security
• Best performance - Bitdefender Endpoint Security
• Best usability - Sophos Endpoint Security and Control

The 2014 AV-TEST Awards for repair:

• Best stand-alone cleanup tool - Kaspersky Lab Virus Removal Tool
• Best antivirus/internet security solution - Malwarebytes Anti-Malware Free

The 2014 AV-TEST Award for Android security (two companies tied for top honors):

• Best Android security product - Qihoo 360 AntiVirus
• Best Android security product - Cheetah Mobile Clean Master

More about AV-TEST

AV-TEST is located in Magdeburg, Germany, employs 30 people, and has been in operation since 2004. What makes AV-TEST unique is the onsite inventory of 150,000,000 pieces of test data and 330,000,000 examples of malicious test data (1,000 terabytes). The collection is not static; the team collects close to 400,000 new malware samples each day.

In order for AV-TEST researchers to subject each antimalware application to online threats, they register and classify thousands of URLs, emails, and files every day using an in-house developed scanner system named VTEST. To make all that happen, AV-TEST has three test laboratories with more than 100 physical workstations (not virtual machines).

Drones for good - from disaster rescue to replanting the world's forests (TechRepublic)

Drones increasingly play a role in modern warfare, with the US military planning to spend about $2bn on the unmanned aircraftthis year.

To highlight that drones have uses beyond killing, the world's first Drones for Good competition was held in Dubai this month.

Helping harvests

Disaster rescue

Organ transportation

Planting one billion trees each year

Enabling safe drone deliveries

Internet Crime Complaint Center | Scammers May Use Paris Terrorist Attack to Solicit Fraudulent Donations (FBI)

AmEx Is Losing Its Millionaires (BusinessWeek)

  

Hedge-fund manager Whitney Tilson used his American Express card for three decades to buy groceries, trips to Europe and just about everything else. A few months ago, he switched.

“I charge a lot of money on my credit card,” said Tilson, 48, who manages more than $83 million at Kase Capital Management in New York. He said the Barclaycard Arrival Plus World MasterCard gives him more cash perks while rewarding him for the money he spends on travel. “The difference between getting 1 percent and 2 percent cash back is thousands of dollars and for that amount of money, Barclaycard has a better offer,” he said.

American Express Co., long the envy of the industry for its wealthy clientele, is fighting to retain its grip on affluent cardholders like Tilson. Rivals including Barclays Plc and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are courting them with enhanced perks, lower fees and more incentives. And as AmEx seeks to diversify by pursuing tech-savvy millennials and underbanked Americans, the risk of eroding its brand—and its biggest source of revenue—is rising.

“AmEx’s cachet with the affluent is not what it used to be,” said Jason Arnold, an RBC Capital Markets analyst. “AmEx has always enjoyed king-of-the-hill status, but that’s changed. They’ve seen more competition in the upper-end, and they recognize that they have to go elsewhere to fill that gap.”

Spending Slowdown

AmEx remains the most widely held card among high-net-worth households, or those with $1 million or more of investable assets, though its edge is narrowing, according to data from wealth-research firm Phoenix Marketing International.

Fifty-nine percent of wealthy households had a card issued by AmEx last year, unchanged from 2012, while those holding a Chase-issued card rose to 58 percent from 52 percent, the data show. Among households making at least $125,000 annually, Chase surpassed AmEx two years ago, the data show.

The competition is increasing as New York-based AmEx struggles to boost sales amid a slowdown in customer-spending growth. Revenue rose 6.6 percent in the fourth quarter, falling short of its 8 percent goal, while customer card spending increased 6 percent to $268.5 billion, compared with 9 percent in the preceding three-month period. Expenses climbed to $6.3 billion as the company said it planned to cut as many as 4,000 jobs this year to improve efficiency.

Preferred Card

AmEx, whose largest shareholder is Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc., fell 7.7 percent this year through Feb. 10, the third-worst performance in the 30-company Dow Jones Industrial Average. The shares climbed in each of the previous six years.

Since the financial crisis, banks have relied more on fee-generating businesses such as credit cards to counter tepid loan demand and volatile trading. As less-affluent consumers cut spending during the recession and a 2009 law known as the CARD Act limited lenders’ ability to raise interest rates and charge late fees, banks revved up their pursuit of customers with top credit scores who pay their bills on time. Credit-card write-offs slid to less than 3 percent last year, the lowest in almost three decades, according to the Federal Reserve.

Most Americans carry at least three cards in their wallets and competition is fierce to supply the one that customers use for the majority of purchases, said Matt Schulz, a senior analyst at Creditcards.com.

Private Jets

Banks are wooing customers with lavish perks like exclusive dinner reservations, wine tastings and tennis lessons. Lenders including Barclays and Citigroup Inc. have struck partnerships with airlines and hotels, offering customers discounts on plane tickets and lodging, as well as cash rewards.

Tilson said he prefers his Barclaycard because it gives him as much as 2.2 percent cash back on travel purchases and no fees on foreign transactions, unlike some AmEx cards. JPMorgan’s Palladium card, available only to clients of its private bank, offers complimentary airline tickets for travel companions and free time on a private jet.

“The customers that we service tend to look at Chase for all of their banking needs,” said Jennifer Roberts, president of New York-based JPMorgan’s affluent and high-net-worth card business. “It was something they were asking us for.”

The average annual fee on U.S. card offers increased to $140 last year from $101 in 2012 and $69 in 2007, as banks added more benefits, according to data from marketing-research firm Mintel Group Ltd. The most popular offer was $95, the company said.

Airport Lounges

AmEx has had to trim or alter perks as competitors struck deals with merchants. AmEx cardholders lost free access to American Airlines and U.S. Airways airport lounges last year, and United Airlines also cut off access to AmEx customers in favor of those with cards from its own partner, JPMorgan, following its merger with Continental Airlines. American Express has since built its own airport lounges in cities including New York, San Francisco and Las Vegas.

Still, for some affluent consumers, the loss of such rewards is reason enough to shop around for a new card.

“American Express used to make me feel special,” said Darius Gilvydis, a radiologist from outside Chicago who switched last year from AmEx to the Ritz Carlton Visa card, issued by JPMorgan. “What the heck do I get from them now? It’s just not worth the money,” he said, referring to the $450 annual fee for the AmEx Platinum card, which is $55 more than the Ritz Carlton card.

‘Growth Prospects’

While the battle for affluent clients is intense, AmEx products are “unmatched,” said Josh Silverman, its president of U.S. consumer services. The number of Platinum card holders increased 8 percent last year from 2013, and the company’s customer service and rewards programs remain the industry standard, he said.

“For all the talk from our competitors about the inroads they are making, we have not seen that reflected in our numbers, not in customer retention or the ability to acquire new cardmembers,” Silverman said in a phone interview. “We have great growth prospects with the affluent.”

As banks chase the rich, competition for partnerships is also intensifying. Costco Wholesale Corp. dropped AmEx as its card issuer in Canada last year and and will end the larger U.S. agreement on March 31, 2016. JetBlue Airways Corp. is also in talks to replace AmEx, other people have said.

Broadening Appeal

Under pressure to retain such partnerships, AmEx in December announced it would extend its arrangement with Delta Air Lines Inc. in a deal with an upfront cost of $109 million. Last month, it did the same with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc.

American Express started a program last year designed to make it easier and cheaper for small businesses to use its network as its cards aren’t as widely accepted as those of rival banks that use networks run by Visa Inc. and MasterCard Inc.

Chief Executive Officer Ken Chenault, 63, has introduced new products aimed at younger and less-affluent customers as AmEx seeks to broaden its appeal. The lender is working with companies including Uber Technologies Inc. and Apple Inc. to expand mobile payments, and courted Americans who lack access to traditional banks with products like its Bluebird prepaid card, offered at Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

Such efforts risk diluting AmEx’s brand, said William Ryan, a Portales Partners LLC analyst. “American Express has always charged merchants a higher rate because of their affluent base,” Ryan said. “What happens when they look like everybody else?”

‘More Battles’

AmEx executives have said repeatedly that becoming more inclusive hasn’t hurt their label and remains a priority. Still, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Campbell has said that efforts to broaden the lender’s appeal are putting pressure on revenue.

The fees AmEx collects from merchants for processing transactions, known as discount revenue, increased last year at a slower rate than the pace of spending on the company’s network, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That’s a sign that AmEx’s profitability is under pressure and the company is spending more money on rewards programs to retain customers, according to analysts including Moshe Orenbuch of Credit Suisse Group AG.

AmEx is awaiting a decision on whether its rules barring merchants from steering customers to use other brands is stifling competition. The U.S. and 17 states are suing AmEx in an antitrust case in federal court in New York. Chenault has said the rules are needed to protect the company’s brand.

“The days when AmEx could solely rely on higher-end customers are long gone,” said Ron Shevlin, an analyst at payments-research firm Aite Group LLC. “AmEx is facing more battles on more fronts.”

Shh! These Gadgets Are Listening to You (PCMagazine)

From Samsung TVs to your Xbox, some of your gadgets are always listening.

Technology is a beautiful thing, but there will always be the naysayers who are concerned that we are one smartphone feature away from 1984.

That's probably a tad extreme, but if the Snowden documents and countless data breaches are any indication, nothing stays private on the Internet. It probably seems like your every tap, swipe, like, and scroll is monitored and mined for custom ads, location-based deals, and follow suggestions.

But the conversations you have in person, in your living room or your car; they're private, right? Maybe not. Just this morning, it was revealed that Samsung's smart TV privacy policy says plainly that the sets might capture snippets of your conversations in its quest to provide you with better voice-recognition technology.

Samsung was likely just covering itself with that piece of information; a request from its lawyers like those doomsday warnings on pharmaceutical commercials. But it's still a little unnerving. How much snooping are we talking about here?

In Samsung's case, you can turn off the voice-recognition features if you're concerned. But it's not the only gadget with always-on features. As more and more gadgets integrate voice features, expect always on or always listening to be a bigger part of the tech equation.

Check out the slideshow for gadgets that are patiently waiting for your command.

 

Moto X

The Moto X was the first Motorola smartphone to add the "OK Google" command (now known as Moto Voice on Motorola devices). With it, you can say that phrase from across the room, and your phone will wake up and accept your queries—from weather updates to sports scores to text messages. 

You need to activate the option on your phone by sitting with it in a quiet room for a bit so it learns your voice. Moto Voice also works on the Droid Maxx, Droid Mini, and Droid Ultra. On the second-gen Moto X, you can create your own launch phrase, like "Hello Moto X." 

According to Motorola, "Moto Voice is not recording everything it hears, it's simply matching the sound to your tuned launch phrase. The recognition of your launch phrase is done entirely on the phone. Motorola is not saving anything heard by the phone or the command either on the phone or in the cloud."

Nexus 6, Nexus 9, Galaxy Note 4

Motorola devices are not the only ones with always-listening voice commands. The newest Nexus devices—the Nexus 6 and Nexus 9— and the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 also respond to "OK Google" commands. More setup (and opt out) details here.

Chrome

Meanwhile, on Google's Chrome browser, your PC can be in a listening mode if you have Google.com open. Unless you always have your Chrome browser open to Google.com, it's not technically an "always on" feature, but you could set it up that way: on a second screen at the office, or on a laptop on the counter while you're cooking, for example.

Amazon Echo

As Amazon says about Echo: "It's always on—just ask for information, music, news, weather, and more." The device, however, does require a "wake word"—either Amazon or Alexa—to carry out your demands. Amazon says the Echo includes an array of seven microphones, which "use beam-forming technology" to hear you from all directions, even if music is playing. Audio is streamed to the cloud via Amazon Web Services, "so it continually learns and adds more functionality over time," Amazon said. It gets to know you, Amazon says, so it can presumably call you by your favorite nickname right before the robot uprising.

Xbox One

Xbox One

The Xbox One has an Instant-On power mode, which lets you wake it up simply by saying "Xbox on." When this mode is on, your console power supply unit (PSU) remains on and the solid white LED on the PSU is bright. You may also hear the console's fan. To alter settings on Xbox One navigate to Home screen > Menu > Settings > Power & startup. 

It's a handy feature, though make sure you don't confuse your console. Some Xbox One owners reported that a mid-2014 commercial for their console featuring actor Aaron Paul saying the "Xbox on" command turned their devices on, too.

Where Can I Drive You?

A car like Knight Rider's KITT is probably on many of our tech bucket lists. While our trusty sedans can't yet save us from danger or drive up the back of an 18-wheeler unassisted (give Google a couple years), car makers are experimenting with tech that puts your car into an always-on mode (usually via Bluetooth) in order to help you make a call or select music without driving into a ditch. 

The systems still need some work. PCMag's Jamie Lendino says his car has a maddening tendency to launch into a 30-second-long voice command tutorial when it doesn't understand—which cannot be silenced. 

With the launch of Sync 3, Ford said it had improved voice recognition to be more conversational, though PCMag's Doug Newcomb said he'll believe it when he sees/hears it.

Facebook Is Listening (for 15 Seconds)

Last year, Facebook announced a feature that will identify the song, TV show, or movie that's playing while you're writing a status update. Similar to Shazam, Facebook's new optional identification feature listens to your surroundings as you type in a new update, and gives you the option to add to your status that you're listening to Beyoncé or watching Game of Thrones, for example. 

Facebook said that nothing the microphone listens to is recorded or stored, and the app cannot identify background noise or conversation. If you'd rather not have the social network scan your surroundings, navigate to Status, tap the smiley face icon, and tap the audio icon to silence it. 

After some users expressed concern, Facebook said that the feature "will only use your microphone (for 15 seconds) when you’re actually writing a status update to try and match music and TV."