Marketing Company Claims That It Actually Is Listening To Phone and Smart Speakers To Target Ads (404media.co) 147
A marketing team within media giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims it has the capability to listen to ambient conversations of consumers through embedded microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices to gather data and use it to target ads, according to a review of CMG marketing materials by 404 Media and details from a pitch given to an outside marketing professional. From a report: Called "Active Listening," CMG claims the capability can identify potential customers "based on casual conversations in real time." The news signals that what a huge swath of the public has believed for years -- that smartphones are listening to people in order to deliver ads -- may finally be a reality in certain situations. Until now, there was no evidence that such a capability actually existed, but its myth permeated due to how sophisticated other ad tracking methods have become.
It is not immediately clear if the capability CMG is advertising and claims works is being used on devices in the market today, but the company notes it is "a marketing technique fit for the future. Available today." 404 Media also found a representative of the company on LinkedIn explicitly asking interested parties to contact them about the product. One marketing professional pitched by CMG on the tech said a CMG representative explained the prices of the service to them. "What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode -- it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage," CMG's website reads.
It is not immediately clear if the capability CMG is advertising and claims works is being used on devices in the market today, but the company notes it is "a marketing technique fit for the future. Available today." 404 Media also found a representative of the company on LinkedIn explicitly asking interested parties to contact them about the product. One marketing professional pitched by CMG on the tech said a CMG representative explained the prices of the service to them. "What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode -- it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage," CMG's website reads.
Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Every one of these article has a softening sentence along the lines that "it is unlikely your devices are listening to you". Why it is 'unlikely'? The technology exists and the PII-stealing data sellers have done worse in the past. Seems like a fairly logical next step attack vector for them.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:5, Funny)
That line wasn't put in the article by the editor, you're device inserted it itself.
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I should clarify I searched and found about a dozen articles from various publications discussing this claim. Some are just cribbing from the others, but a few have more in depth discussion. Almost every one of them has that same softening sentence though.
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Well clearly your device is inserting it at those websites as well.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
The literate also recognize the error and mentally correct it.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
No, thatâ(TM)s how it reads to ASSHOLES. Literate people understand the intent perfectly well.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Nah your just an asshole
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Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
It's buried on line 5073 of the Eula that you agreed to when you set up your tv. There is a reason my smart tv isn't allowed online.
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Re:Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:5, Insightful)
From what I have heard this has been out there for years, but technically that it doesn't wiretap, but uses a filter for certain audio patterns, which could be TV media or music, or keywords or phrases.
OF course its all made in China, so it can be totally trusted.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
With appropriate permissions, mic can be active in Android and iOS devices when the screen is off. If the guilty app makes sure the screen is off before recording, the icon showing will not help reveal the transgression.
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The icon on Android lingers for a few seconds after the mic is turned off. If the user turned the screen on while recording was in progress, it would be visible.
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Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:4, Informative)
> Not sure theres anyone who hasnt experienced having a face to face conversation only to later find a ad for that product and its listing on Amazon.
I haven't. Now you can be sure.
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Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Even if that happens, there are many likely scenarios that explain it without resorting to spying.
First, maybe the other person immediately looked up something related. Your location pinned you nearby, so you get ads too. This is similar to how Facebook will suddenly send you suggested friends after you go to a party.
Or maybe there was something trackable that kicked off the conversation. Like, you spoke about grills after Annie looked up grills and then mentioned grilling at Eddie's place, who then started
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With the current capabilities of AI every phone can be tapped and if ad companies are doing it then it's clear that three letter agencies have done it for many years.
It's even likely that the ad companies listening in are used some government injected feature that's around but the government agency responsible for that can't tell without revealing themselves.
It's on a level Orwell wouldn't have been able to dream up.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:5, Insightful)
Fascinates me that we excoriate North Korea in part for massive inescapable surveillance in every home, but here we pay out the ass to have it.
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Intent matters. Privacy is not black and white. It's a sliding scale based what, who and why. There are absolutely things I've have no problem some random marketer knowing that I wouldn't want my government run by an oppressive dictator who regulates my hairstyle to know (yeah yeah I know that's a myth, but the point is the same).
I'm far more afraid of people who can actually impact my life than Cox Media Group. Not excusing this behaviour, this is shit one way or the other, but the point remains privacy is
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Thing is, lately when the Constitution prevents the Government from spying in a given way, they can just buy it from the marketer legally.
(In the US, anyway. "Thank God we're not like those Euroweenies with their privacy protections, universal healthcare, social safety net and all...")
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Not only current intent, but when data is collected, intents of all people that come after matter even more.
If I told you that, in 2 election cycles, your country would become an oppressive dictatorship, how would your view on current collection "for marketing purposes" change?
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Every one of these article has a softening sentence along the lines that "it is unlikely your devices are listening to you". Why it is 'unlikely'? The technology exists and the PII-stealing data sellers have done worse in the past. Seems like a fairly logical next step attack vector for them.
I could list a lot of reasons it's unlikely, but the biggest one is battery life. If your phone were actively listening all the time, the battery would die in 2-3 hours. They can do stuff like the Siri and Google Assistant "always listening" because there's dedicated low-power circuitry that is listening for that exact pattern of sounds. You can't record and collect (much less transmit or decode on-device) general audio without consuming a lot more power.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
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Simple: Doing this is actually a crime in many countries, for example Germany.
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Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Because no one has found evidence yet. If it was commonplace then someone would have likely found a smoking gun. So, since no one has, it is unlikely that your particular devices are listening to you.
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Because while Google probably doesnâ(TM)t give a shit anymore, Apple definately cares about reputational damage. Imagine the uproar that would arise if it was revealed Apple made this possible, was aware of capabilities used that way and said absolutely nothing?
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
Re: Why is it "unlikely"? (Score:2)
The Jacobin revolutionaries are hurt you don't remember them.
Wiretapping (Score:5, Informative)
If they are actually doing this then they'd be committing a crime in MA as recording someone without their consent is wiretapping.
https://www.dmlp.org/legal-gui... [dmlp.org]
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Probably Illegal in most states to listen to a conservation.
I bet they bury a blanket "we may listen anytime we feel like it." someplace in the click-through agreement in the hopes that the statement makes it legal.
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Think a little larger. (Score:3)
Suppose you buy one of these things, and you're just fine with it listening to you. No problem, right? You agreed to the EULA.
But then suppose that while you're out of the house, your underage daughter calls her boyfriend and talks dirty for a while. Regardless of the fact that you may have consented to recording, your daughter did not, and certainly not her boyfriend.
At this point, wiretapping laws certainly apply - the device, at the behest of Big Ad Company(tm), has just done two illegal things:
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Can't make the illegal legal through a contract of any sort, sorry.
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You are flat-out wrong. If you agree (via click-thru) to allow it, then it is legal. PERIOD."
No, you are flat-out wrong. I've beaten click-through rental late fees BECAUSE THEY ARE ILLEGAL IN THE FIRST PLACE IN MY STATE.
You cannot make that which is illegal by law a legal thing under contract.
Go the fuck back to school.
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I would like lawyers to chime in here as obvious example of why this is incorrect is murder. If a EULA has verbiage like "you agree we can kill you via bullet to the head whenever we wish" I doubt that would hold up in court. Also things like "we can have sex whenever we want with you" cant be contracted away as its still considered Rape as it requires consent per instance.
Yet most contract law I've seen allows you to waive pretty much any and all other of your rights in spite of laws preventing thus. Where
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Re:Wiretapping (Score:5, Insightful)
If they are actually doing this then they'd be committing a crime in MA as recording someone without their consent is wiretapping.
https://www.dmlp.org/legal-gui... [dmlp.org]
Not to mention the Federal Anti-Hacking Law. I'm pretty sure this constitutes "Unauthorized Access". Regardless of what any Click-Through "License" may say.
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Not long before it's in the EULA, if not covered by general telemetry already.
I'm sure somewhere (Score:3)
Meanwhile when you sue recent changes to law mean your only recourse will be arbitration (well not really "recent", it was during the Bush jr administration and the current Supreme Court upheld it). So you won't even the the $5 off coupon of a class action suit out of it.
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It's only illegal if you are discovered.
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Probably a contract clause that says buy purchasing the device and providing it with Internet, you agree that your conversations can be used how they see fit. Don't like it, don't own a smart phone.
I'm sure even after they are caught and told "no" the TLAs will still be abusing the situation anyway. The horse has clearly left the barn on this one.
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If they are actually doing this then they'd be committing a crime in MA as recording someone without their consent is wiretapping.
A couple years ago remember reading an EULA I think it was for a smart TV with a section about not only the owner agreeing to being recorded but going on to assert it is the owners responsibility to get consent of anyone else who may be in range of the microphones.
They effectively are trying to shift legal liability for their own malware to the owner of the device.
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Permissions (Score:3)
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You think anyone asks for your permission? Those preinstalled apps come with preinstalled permissions.
And you can't even get rid of that junk.
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I have an iPhone. I think if Apple's pre-installed apps were always listening and passing that on to marketers, it would have been discovered by now. For everything else, the OS enforces permissions to various resources.
SmartTV? Smart Speaker? I have no use for either.
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I have an iPhone. I think if Apple's pre-installed apps were always listening and passing that on to marketers, it would have been discovered by now. For everything else, the OS enforces permissions to various resources.
SmartTV? Smart Speaker? I have no use for either.
Believe me, someone with WireShark would have noticed the Traffic by now!
Re: Permissions (Score:2)
Unless the recognition is done on device and the data sent over the cellular network, sure.
Yes that would use battery. But you could record in AMR or similar and store for processing while charging. The data would be very small.
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Unless the recognition is done on device and the data sent over the cellular network, sure.
Yes that would use battery. But you could record in AMR or similar and store for processing while charging. The data would be very small.
Not buying the "Well, it could just be sent over Cellular Data." There are people far more paranoid (and far more knowledgable) than I, that would have noticed by now.
Believing this is happening on a System-Level basis on an iPhone is like Impeaching Joe Biden: "Well, if we keep Investigating, we're SURE we'll find something!"
Ain't happening; someone would have noticed.
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Sure, and Google, the world's largest advertising company, is going to tell random marketing dude at one of their competitors that they do this questionably legal thing. Also, Apple is also going to tell him, even though it risks their many billions of dollars a year hardware business.
Alternate theory: marketing dude is fibbing in his sales pitch.
Re: Permissions (Score:2)
The only incentive for them to do this would be to entice advertisers. There is literally no benefit to doing this without telling them, dingdong.
Re:Permissions (Score:5, Informative)
You think anyone asks for your permission? Those preinstalled apps come with preinstalled permissions.
And you can't even get rid of that junk.
Not on Apple stuff.
There is a Pop-Up the first time it wants to access stuff, and again periodically on subsequent launches. Plus, you can grant Access only when the App is Frontmost. So, ongoing, persistent Surveillance would be pretty hard to achieve.
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...unless of course Apple is in on it. Which is kinda hard to audit considering, well, it's kinda hard to audit an iPhone...
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...unless of course Apple is in on it. Which is kinda hard to audit considering, well, it's kinda hard to audit an iPhone...
In on what?
And how is the Data going to leave the phone without being detectable?
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Have you ever taken a peek into the data stream going in and out of your phone? It's quite impressive.
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Have you ever taken a peek into the data stream going in and out of your phone? It's quite impressive.
No, I have better things to do.
But I am sure that if my preferred Phone was spewing data when it was ostensibly "idle", there would have been someone bitching about it by now.
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Someone is [gizmodo.com].
But who cares if they're bitching if nobody wants to hear it?
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Not on Apple stuff.
There is a Pop-Up the first time it wants to access stuff
You're confusing system level applications which you never open and end user apps. Yeah all Android apps work the same, even the pre-installed ones. But there are 10s of background apps in iOS and Android that the user never interacts with and thus has pre-baked permissions.
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Not on Apple stuff.
There is a Pop-Up the first time it wants to access stuff
You're confusing system level applications which you never open and end user apps. Yeah all Android apps work the same, even the pre-installed ones. But there are 10s of background apps in iOS and Android that the user never interacts with and thus has pre-baked permissions.
But those are not subject to the Permissions-Granting Alert precisely because those Background Applications are essentially part of the OS, are Developed and controlled by the OEM, and are assumed to be non-malicious in their intent. No Third-Party User-Installed App should be able to bypass that Permissions-Approval subsystem.
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Wireshark, anyone? (Score:5, Insightful)
Maybe I'm underestimating the laziness of researchers, but I would think that it would be relatively easy to dump a wireshark capture of packets at the router level to see if a device was listening to ambient conversations. That these devices are spying (for Great and Glorious Cause of Capitalism!) does not surprise me; it surprises me that no one has researched this.
After having networking issues with the only Windows10 computer in my house, I discovered that Edge was slurping down about a megabit of bandwidth as it ran in the background doing "nothing". While I can't say whether or not it was spying on me, I can only wonder why someone at Microsoft thought this level of resource wastage was appropriate. I can only wonder how much network traffic is consumed not by actual streaming or user applications, but by spyware intended to sell ads.
Re: Wireshark, anyone? (Score:3)
And if they only transmit it over cellular?
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You can still run tcpdump on your phone and capture packets whether you're on cellular, USB NIC or wifi. Alternatively, you can setup a VPN to send all your cellular traffic to a specific VPN server that you control and can capture network packets from.
Plus, most cellphones route their comm. over WiFi when possible; thus becoming as Discoverable as any other LAN traffic.
Why would they send the voice? (Score:2)
Many phones are capable of local speech to text. It doesn't have to be accurate or compute intensive, as long as it can generally get a decent amount of word matches, or even just keywords, and transmit them as text, then it might be negligible data-wise or even be bundled with other information. Steganography could be used to transmit them mixed up with other random data.
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Many phones are capable of local speech to text. It doesn't have to be accurate or compute intensive, as long as it can generally get a decent amount of word matches, or even just keywords, and transmit them as text, then it might be negligible data-wise or even be bundled with other information. Steganography could be used to transmit them mixed up with other random data.
Because TFA, TFS and TFC* claim that this is done on "casual conversations". Try to ask Text-to-Speech to discern what many different voices are saying in a casual conversation, and assign eachy sentence to the proper person, and soon you will see is not a task that will not darin the battery of your phone/tablet, and make it so hot that is uncofortable to put in your pocket or use.
* TFC == The FilesystemChecking Company
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They are just looking for keywords so they can market products to you. Doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough.
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Many phones are capable of local speech to text. It doesn't have to be accurate or compute intensive, as long as it can generally get a decent amount of word matches, or even just keywords, and transmit them as text, then it might be negligible data-wise or even be bundled with other information. Steganography could be used to transmit them mixed up with other random data.
Because TFA, TFS and TFC* claim that this is done on "casual conversations". Try to ask Text-to-Speech to discern what many different voices are saying in a casual conversation, and assign eachy sentence to the proper person, and soon you will see is not a task that will not darin the battery of your phone/tablet, and make it so hot that is uncofortable to put in your pocket or use.
* TFC == The FilesystemChecking Company
Especially with the TV spewing its own "conversation(s)" simultaneously into the same space. And what if you're watching a Documentary on Money Laundering, or Fentanyl Production, or The Rise of Neo Nazis?
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Many phones are capable of local speech to text. It doesn't have to be accurate or compute intensive, as long as it can generally get a decent amount of word matches, or even just keywords, and transmit them as text, then it might be negligible data-wise or even be bundled with other information. Steganography could be used to transmit them mixed up with other random data.
But it can't hide the Target IP. Anyone with SIGINT knowledge can tell you that knowing who you are talking-to is almost as valuable as knowing what is being said. For example, if the Target IP is in the middle of Nigeria, it's likely not something you want to have happening.
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Without the encryption keys, proving an encrypted packet capture has any specific data in it is challenging at best. About all you could reasonably get would be the IP address where the data is transmitted to, and an estimate of how big the data is. That's not nothing, but it's not that useful.
Be lenient with Gillbates, s/he was thinking on the right track but the wrong tool, what you need is not Wireshark (a FOSS protocol analyzer and packet dumper), instead, you need a DPI (Deep Packet Inspection). For analyzing the data of one (or a few) smart devices, a FOSS DPI, running on a run of the Mill AMD64 server is more than enough.
Both tools are readily available in security research and academic circles.
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If only the device doing the encryption wasn't held in your hand...
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Maybe I'm underestimating the laziness of researchers, but I would think that it would be relatively easy to dump a wireshark capture of packets at the router level to see if a device was listening to ambient conversations.
You are on the right track, but on the wrong tool. What you would need to uncover this "conspiracy" is a DPI, as in Deep Packet Inspection.
While telco grade DPIs are super expensive (because they should be able to handle TBs of data at wire speed), to analyze the data moving from and to an apliance (like a tablet, smartphone, smart assistant, or smartTV) a sufficiently powerfull AMD64 Server with a FOSS research implementation of a DPI should be more than enough.
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Should be interesting. (Score:2)
This will be highly illegal in a lot of places.
Government officials in many countries have smartphones. This may have the potential to cause a diplomatic incident, whether the capability is currently there or not and whether it us used or not.
The paranoid extremist cults that dot the American landscape may well cause problems over this, and juries might well be sympathetic. This really isn't a safe thing to be publicly announcing in such troubled times.
All in all, this is a really bad thing - for Cox, anywa
I’ve assumed this has been happening (Score:5, Insightful)
My phone listens in on me. Who’s listening? I dunno how far it goes. The ad companies, somehow. That’s for sure. Which suggests, at some level, a tie-up between Apple and the ad companies, since nothing happens on my iphone without Apple giving the thumbs up.
And if ad-sellers can listen in, you can be damn sure the NSA can as well. Meh. Whatever. If I desire true privacy I’ll put my phone down and go for a walk outside.
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They started doing it around the mid-2010s. I saw plenty of internet ads before then, but the effect you describe never happened until then.
Not long after that, they started with the scanning and automated categorization of image files on your device.
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There is a reason you were talking about what you were talking about, usually location based.
I once stepped into the Shelving furniture aisle in a department store to take a 40 minute phone call from an attorney about his website.
The next several days I got a LOT of ads for shelves. Nothing special about websites and legal stuff. Google has maps of stores interiors, and combines them with precise location services.
My brother in law, when we shared an IP address received a PDF from a home inspector into his
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Your phone isn't listening. Advertisers are guessing what you might want from other metrics. Age, general location, diet, shopping habits etc. You only notice when they guess right.
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My phone listens in on me. Who's listening? I dunno how far it goes. The ad companies, somehow. That's for sure.
The one that pissed me off a few years ago was Amazon.
I work in IT. One day, I was doing an Amazon search for some drive caddies for a Dell Poweredge server; I did so on my personal account. Later that day, I went to a client's office, a law firm. I left my personal phone in my car, Wi-Fi off, location all-the-way-off (i.e. disabled in Android *and* XPrivacy'd to give false location data to apps that asked). Laptop still powered off, in the bag.
I sat down at the attorney's computer to do a repair. He had Am
Absurd (Score:5, Insightful)
Brace for it, the dystopian future is comming... (Score:3)
... but no there yet! Until a while ago, active listening was a pipe dream... But, sooner rather than later, it will become a sad reality. Allow me to explain:
Unless you sent out all the conversations to a server farm somewhere to be scrutinized by some sort of ML algorithm that, at that time, could only run cloud-side, you had to do that either by opt-in or opt-out cnad reflect it in tour ToS... And we never heard anything about the opt-in, or the opt-out, for that matter.
But let's say that the companies went and did it without permission, opt in, opt-out and ToS be damned! No nothing!
And let's say also that no one spilled the beans, neither that guy that loves to gossip about anything and everything all the time, nor that girl that was going to be a whistleblower "for the greater good", even then, with all that secrecy, a company sending your conversations to the cloud to be analyzed would be pretty easy to discover.
The sheer volume of audio going to the cloud would be a dead gieveaway*, then use a little bit of DPI (Deep Packet Inspection, not to be confused with a protocol anayzer like Wireshark) and is pretty easy to figure it out, even if the conversations are encrypted. And let's face it, those that claim that the encrypted data could no be analyzed fortget that these are the same companies that day in and day out commit security blunders, so we are somehow to believe that, magically, the division that listens to conversations has top notch security and cryptographic practices, while all the other dicision were Kraptastik at security and Cryptography... Color me sceptic.
For less that that many a security researcher achieved his/her 15 min of fame, imagine what can be the incentive for a security researcher to lift the lid on that! And yet, no security researcher did. Again, color me sceptic.
That rumour about the devices listening came because, for the uniniciated, the ability of big tech companies learning things about you and building a profile using data readily available on your smartphone, like the websites you navigate to, the youtube videos you watch, the twitter feeds you follow, the facebook groups you read, what you buy on amazon of FB marketplace, and buying data from data brokers seems "magical". Actually, TFS says as much.
Until now, there was no evidence that such a capability actually existed, but its myth permeated due to how sophisticated other ad tracking methods have become.
But now, with many a embedded processor having ML acclelerators, the companies do not need to send the conversarions out to the cloud to be analyzed, they can analize them conversations device-side, and send only the conclusions to the datacenter.
Yes, the models will be trained on the cloud, but the inference will be run on the device.
We were heading into a dystopia, but did not arrived yet, but now, arrival is inminent
JM2C, YMMV
PS: For what is worth, I do believe that ML accelerators have a place on devices, my favourite example is on smart TVs, If they can get SD content and get it to EDTV (Enhanced Definition Television: 848x480p 16:9 or 768x576p 4:3 both better than a DVDs 480P 4:3 or broadcasts 480i and 512i 4:3, but less than HDTV's 720p 16:9) using ML techniques similar to what DLSS and XeSS do in video Games, I am all in.
* And before you said they used Text to Speech, let's see who that goes, doubly so when you have to discern and transcribe "may parties talking" like TFS says
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But now, with many a embedded processor having ML acclelerators, the companies do not need to send the conversarions out to the cloud to be analyzed, they can analize them conversations device-side, and send only the conclusions to the datacenter.
And your phone battery would last about two hours.
Something like this wouldn't be tolerated (Score:2)
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Shame we don't really have that. What we have is a Republic for business opportunities!
smash (Score:2)
Sounds to good to be true. (Score:2)
Sounds to good to be true.
Well, "good", if you keep in mind that this is a sales pitch for advertising money. But also for those guys it is: if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Makes these illegal to possess in Germany (Score:2)
They then qualify as a "covert listening device" and those are illegal to own or sell.
Without Informed Consent? (Score:2)
I do not think anybody has agreed to allow their underage children to be spied on in this way.
Wiretap law (Score:2)
True or not, BUT.. (Score:2)
click-thru EULA (Score:2)
Question for all these "it's prolly on page 517 of every EULA, so it's legal" folks. Can you please point me at such verbiage? Should be really easy to find, since it's supposedly everywhere.