Cox deletes ‘Active Listening’ ad pitch after boasting that it eavesdrops though our phones::undefined
this was such a weird claim, and I never really understood how it could be true specifically for phones, where they aren’t in control of system software. there’s like a gradient of possibility here:
- Android phones from major manufacturers, and Apple phones: doubt it. those things are too heavily scrutinized, someone would’ve found it, and the companies that make them don’t have the impetus.
- official “smart” voice devices from Amazon, Google, et al: doubt it, same reasoning as above
- Android phones from small players, heavily subsidized models, etc.: sure, could be
- smart TVs from major manufacturers: probably not? medium “maybe”? I bought one of these with a hardware mic switch so I guess that shows my paranoia
- other smart TVs: I dunno, feels highly likely
so: I’m careful about what I use so my risk felt pretty low, but I also feel like if this were true security researchers would’ve discovered it. let alone the fact that what they describe is bandwidth and battery intensive (off-device or on-device respectively, I don’t remember what they claimed as I read the 404 media report some weeks back) but it still makes me wonder: what led them to make these claims then? fascinating, pretty scary.
Android phones from major manufacturers, and Apple phones: doubt it.
Bold added for emphasis, Apple claims privacy as a feature and OS control of the mic to prevent this exact sort of thing. Not only would someone have found it, it would be a news cycle on the mainstream news, and basically just the wallpaper for any tech-centric website.
I mean, fucks sake, iFixIt alone would find mics in places they shouldn’t be and this would be a story.
Unfortunately, the truth is more boring, and basically pretty much every app/website most of us use are tracking us in some way unless you really seek prevention. They don’t need the mic.
The spying that’s openly admitted in terms and conditions should be alarming enough — if anyone actually read and understood all the legalese. Consider this: https://time.com/5568815/amazon-workers-listen-to-alexa/
I’ve seen Android phones activate Google Assistant seemingly at random many many many times. They’re only supposed to activate when called by a specific phrase like “okay Google”, but there are plenty of false positives, and every time that happens, an audio recording gets sent to Google. Same deal with Alexa and Siri. This is, of course, allowed by the terms and conditions.
At least Android makes it visible to the user when this happens. I wouldn’t bet on smart TVs doing the same.
At this point there’s not much you can do about it. Even if I secure my own devices and my own home network, that all goes out the window the second anyone else walks in my door with their own smartphone.
That said, I agree that the claim is likely false with third-party apps on modern smartphones from major brands. It’s not easy for background activities to access the camera or microphone without the user’s knowledge on iOS or Android. First-party and second-party spying is hard to avoid, though.
They’re only supposed to activate when called by a specific phrase like “okay Google”, but there are plenty of false positives, and every time that happens, an audio recording gets sent to Google.
And you can even do Google takeout and see all the recordings they took of you. Many of which you’ll notice doesn’t have you asking or doing anything remotely related to a voice search.
Their claim was bullshit from the beginning:
Update: Cox Media Group responded by saying that it uses “third-party vendor products powered by data sets sourced from users by various social media and other applications then packaged and resold to data servicers. Advertising data based on voice and other data is collected by these platforms and devices under the terms and conditions provided by those apps and accepted by their users, and can then be sold to third-party companies and converted into anonymized information for advertisers. “CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement,” the company added. “We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent.”
So typical advertising mechanisms, not “active listening”. Someone from marketing was too eager to sell their service.
Yeah but I already believe they are listening because one time I talked about something and it advertised it to me, and let’s ignore all of the hundreds of things I also said just that day alone that it didn’t advertise to me, so this was clearly “saying the quiet part out loud.” And now they are just trying to cover their asses.
Chance that it’s just marketing people talking out of their asses again, but then again, we have a lot of cheap smart devices with dubious firmwares so it might be possible on those sketchy devices.
I mean, it’s possible on any device with a microphone that’s connected to the internet. But can people advertising a service just lie? That’s when the law actually works, when it’s a company hurting another company. So if false advertising laws were ever going to be enforced, it’d be against a claim like this. I don’t think they’d take the chance of the bad PR of this getting out and the potential suit if they weren’t able to do it when a different deep-pocketed entity took them to court over the false claims to get their business.
It’s fully possible, there’s no question about that. The government has been using cell phones to do this for a long time, as evidenced by the Snowden leaks. There were CIA “broken eagle” leaks (if I’m remembering that correctly) claiming any smart tv was a possible bug, but this was back when it seemed like there were unreasonable hurdles in the way for them to actually achieve it when, now, it’s all the more possible as we connect more “smart” devices that have become cheaper and cheaper. Have you read the privacy policy on all of the different smart device apps? Because I don’t use any of that IOT bullshit but i read the policy for my new ear buds last month and I ran those fuckers back to the store as fast as I could. The allowances have become genuinely insane.
So, it’s technically possible, we’ve become way more lax as products have become cheaper and more permissive with the permissions we allow them (have you noticed how everything needs access to your location now? Like…to use Bluetooth or Wi-Fi, I’m told I need to give it access to my location. What’s that shit?), and the privacy policies state they can have access to pretty much any information the product has the potential to gather.
So…are they doing it? I can’t be sure. But it is entirely technically possible and they’re asking permission to do it and there is widespread anecdotal evidence that it’s happening and they’re now claiming they’re doing it…so…at what point do we just have to accept that they’re doing it?
I don’t know why anyone would believe anyone would like that.
I’ve worked with marketers for years. many of them have a blind spot for what they create: they can realize something is irritating, or invasive, but not when it’s their marketing, which is obviously superior and what people want to see. it’s some sort of artist+marketer brainrot.
sorry to generalize, I’ve just seen it a lot over the years.
I imagine this is something like it: we’ll reach them with the perfect message, it’ll be exactly what they want! won’t that be delightful?
…completely ignoring how horrifying it is.
This was a pitch to their customers. They just forgot that we could hear them too.
I’m confident this is built in to many smart TVs these days.
Well. Wireshark would confirm that if it were true.
I’m sure it will show HTTPS traffic outbound from your TV.
I’m sure it will show no traffic whatsoever if you don’t connect your TV to your network
