1y ago

Are Phones and Smart Speakers Listening to You? Cox Media Group Claims They Can | Cord Cutters News

cordcuttersnews.com Marketing Company Claims That It Actually Is Listening to Your Phone and Smart Speakers to Target Ads

“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.”

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And yet thousands of security researchers can't find a shed of evidence. This shit is tiresome and counter productive. The general public is weary of hearing this made up bullshit.
The technical practice isn't hard. That's the claim. The reality is nobody is buying shit doing this and this is just another repost from the same 404 article months ago.
- The advertisement literally tells you that they're doing it... The fuck are talking about it's made up? (https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/blog/active-listening-an-overview as an example)
  from the same 404 article months ago.
  Dec 14, 2023 (https://www.404media.co/cmg-cox-media-actually-listening-to-phones-smartspeakers-for-ads-marketing/) is months ago? Shit man... What the fuck are you high on?
  
  I still wouldn't believe it. Even the 404 article does not confirm anything and the ad company does not provide any details.
  This whole thing feels like marketing, claiming something outrageous to get people talking about your company.
  
  That's entirely possible. But they did say it themselves on their own site. Look at the link I've posted in response to the other guy.
  Even if they're just joking about it they deserve all the negative press they'll get.
  
  The company added that it does 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" and "regret[s] any confusion."
  https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/12/no-a-marketing-firm-isnt-tapping-your-device-to-hear-private-conversations/
  
  Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20231214235444/https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/blog/active-listening-an-overview
  Is Active Listening Legal?
  We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal? The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page terms of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included.
  So what were you saying?
  
  Did you read the article? No, you did not.
  According to the company this is all from regular 3rd party stuff. Being legal or not is beside the point when you are not actually doing something.
  You're argument is based on what a marketing company put in their marketing.
  Read the article, with clarifications from the company
  ETA : if this were true I would either see it in my firewall logs, or it would blow through my data cap in a week. Surveillance capitalism is bullshit, this is just a grift.
  
  Seems funny how you keep saying from the company as if somehow asking s murderer with red bloody hands if they did it is somehow a creditable source
  
  You’re argument is based on what a marketing company put in their marketing.
  But your response is
  with clarifications from the company
  So what the company says isn't good enough... Except when it's in your favor? You realize that both statement are "from the company".
  
  Fight as long as you want, when they were called out on it they backed off. The technical aspects of this are not trivial, nor is the amount of data needed as anyone who has had an Alexa or similar spyware in their house will tell you.
  Like I said
  if this were true I would either see it in my firewall logs, or it would blow through my data cap in a week.
  
  Like I said
  undefined
  
  if this were true I would either see it in my firewall logs, or it would blow through my data cap in a week.
  Audio is literally trivial amounts of bandwidth. You wouldn't notice it at all. Using something like Opus, you could stream audio 24/7 and reach about 300MBs uploaded. Now do some basic trimming/word processing... That number can easily be less than 10MB a day.
- Bro, I'll literally be having a conversation with someone about a topic, and all of the sudden Google starts recommending me products related to the discussion afterwards. Smart phones and smart speakers without a doubt listen in on our conversations. There's the evidence.
  
  Find a literal shred of evidence. You have no clue how ads work bruh.
  
  That's not evidence. That's some random anecdote. Back it up or gtfo.
  
  Eh, surprised that's happening to someone in this community. Strip Google off your phone and throw out any hardware with a microphone that doesn't run open source software and this will stop happening.

70 comments