Facebook ad partner may have tried to listen into your conversations
If you ever thought that Facebook was listening in on your conversations to hit you with targeted advertising, you may have been right.
Meta and Google were allegedly clients of an advertiser's open-mic surveillance program.
The advertising industry has been trying to improve how it targets ads to users for years, often by mining data for information to build user profiles. However, in the latest revelation, it may have been assisted by smartphones and tablets actively monitoring your everyday conversations.
A slide deck from Cox Media Group seen by 404 Media discusses a service it offered that effectively performed surveillance on a user. Called "Active Listening," the document leak says it could use a device's microphone to listen in to a user's speech whenever they are within audible range.
The idea was that the specialist software would capture voice data from the environment, determining what was being discussed or mentioned. That information would then be paired with existing behavioral data stored in a profile of the user, which in turn allowed for more tailored advertising to be displayed.
A slide from the CMG deck [404 Media]
The pitch deck refers to it as "capturing real-time intent data by listening" to conversations, which is analyzed by AI with over 470 other sources. It cost companies $100 per day to collect a weekly data set for users within a 10-mile radius using the feature.
Active Listening was previously detailed in an earlier report by the publication, which has prompted actions by the companies involved. This included CMG removing evidence of the program from its websites.
This included a blog post from November 2023 discussing how it was legal for phones and devices to listen to users. It also mentioned "When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page term of use agreement, somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included."
CMG also boasted that it has partnered with Amazon, Facebook, and Google, which acted as data sources and allegedly as clients of the service.
After being alerted to the existence of the slide deck and inbound reports, Google removed CMG from its "Parters Program." This also prompted Meta to review CMG's actions to determine if any terms of service have been broken.
Amazon insisted to the report that its advertising business hadn't worked with CMG on the program, and that it didn't plan to either.
Not an Apple issue
While the prospect of mobile devices listening in could be a privacy nightmare, it's not one that would affect Apple users.
Besides Apple's usual stance on ensuring user privacy is maintained wherever possible, it also has systems in place to prevent such privacy abuses even occurring.
Whenever a microphone is active, Apple's devices display an indicator alerting the user to the activity. This can include an orange dot on an iPhone screen when the mic is being used, to a green indicator for the camera.
Even though Apple hardware is pretty much in the clear here, other hardware platforms may still use it. With billions of Android devices in the world, your conversations may still be snooped by advertisers.
Read on AppleInsider
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For what it's worth, most relatively recent Google Android devices also give the user a “green indicator” if the microphone or camera is in use, just as iPhone's do. That's been in place since Android 12 in 2021.
https://source.android.com/docs/core/permissions/privacy-indicators
EDIT: Yes, the story was previously reported here last year:
At the time Cox Media denied they were doing any such thing, yet here we are again.
https://appleinsider.com/articles/23/12/15/one-advertiser-may-be-able-to-listen-in-on-you----if-you-have-an-android-phone
BTW, Cox Media is no longer trusted by Google and removed as an advertising partner as mentioned in the AI article. Facebook and Amazon are less clear.
Which the vast majority of users won't understand and will therefore ignore.
So many science fiction stories coming true. That one scene from Minority Report where you walk into a store, your eyeballs are scanned and then assaulted by ads. Memorable scene.
And yes, I've seen it pop up due to a browser tab in Safari which had no business using the microphone (Spotify). So this is definitely a bigger problem with web apps trying to monetize traffic as much as possible. Comes with the territory of the new business model for technology (free, but you're the product) which Google was one of the pioneers of. Pandora's box can't be closed now sadly. My main hope is that, with enough publicity and governance, people can at least be made fully aware of it so that they're able to make informed choices.
Visual notifications are part of the OS, and have been since a few months after Apple began doing so.
https://support.google.com/android/answer/13532937?hl=en#:~:text=When apps use your camera,Tap again to manage permissions.
As for other OS'es that may be Android based such as those in China, I've no idea.
But on another point, wouldn’t this be illegal? I mean actually criminally illegal to record someone without their knowledge?
I really like what Apple has done in making it very easy for end users to know what an app is hoovering up by requiring permission. It's simple, it's strait-forward, and it's not hidden behind legalese presented in 000 font. This same approach should be made for all other privacy related personal intrusions. I know a lot of folks don't give a crap about this stuff, as evidenced by Facebook's huge numbers of subscribers who are perfectly fine with Facebook drilling a personal data well into their life, but enough already. They're destroying the value of the internet.
Any app that intentionally spies on users in any way, shape, or form should be delisted from the App Store and the developer banned from further contributing anything to the App Store. If anyone in the AppleInsider community knows of any app that is doing this, whether or not their nefarious activities are essentially hidden in their apps EULA or TOS, please let everyone know. I will delete those apps immediately.
The signal-to-noise ratio for nearly every online service, including messaging, web browsing, phone, television, streaming media, etc., has totally gone down the crapper. The noise is winning and we are all losing.