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Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

soundguys.com

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Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#21

Post by unethical_ban »

Re: Personal fitness and menstruation history - Is that shocking? They're earbuds, but they're marketed as fitness buds that track personal data. It looks like Fitbit for your ears. Fitbit and Apple Health (or whatever it is called) does these kinds of things as well.

Re: Bose collecting all that stuff

I can see "why" they would want all that, in order to optimize their sound output of their buds to the kind of music and environments for which they are used. That should, of course, be opt-in, but I don't think it is evil.

Do I necessarily like the latter example? No. I believe, like the "cookie policies" that exist on many websites, there should be "Needed permissions" and "Please thank you" permissions, and they should incentivize the consumer to help them out. Amazon does this on their Kindles: $20 off if you let them run ads on the lock screen.

But if all the manufacturers do this, then what competition is there to push them to change?

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#23

Post by ktr »

Has anyone had any experience with new Bose headphones? If you use the Bose Connect app, I believe what the author wrote is accurate. But that app doesn’t work on the newer headphones (at least, not the ones I have). Instead I need to download the “Bose Music” app which doesn’t seem to give you the same options for privacy. And if you don’t use that app, the headphones are much less useful (eg, no hardware controls to switch which device you are connected to).

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#25

Post by ryder9 »

gruez wrote: post #17
Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Ahh, this is real reason why the phone manufacturers want to get rid of the headphone jack. I was so naive to think it was only about DRM/licensing.

Isn't this really only an issue if you use the companion app? I doubt the usb-c/lightning/bluetooth headphones can exfiltrate data if you don't have the companion app installed.

fearsturbation > reality

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#26

Post by walls »

dangoor wrote: post #19
Bluecobra wrote: post #12

Ahh, this is real reason why the phone manufacturers want to get rid of the headphone jack. I was so naive to think it was only about DRM/licensing.

There were two things that happened when Apple got rid of the headphone jack: (1) they added water resistance, (2) the phones got thinner. Plus, Apple had seen the trends heading toward wireless headphones. They still included a dongle to give you a standard headphone jack. While Apple could likely have gotten their water resistance even with the headphone jack, they couldn’t have made the phones as thin. People may…

The phones are thicker now than they ever were with the headphone jack. In fact, the 7 was the last version to get thinner.

https://i-cdn.phonearena.com/images/articles/301929-image/iP...

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#27

Post by [deleted] »

Lio wrote: post #20
gruez wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this really only an issue if you use the companion app? I doubt the usb-c/lightning/bluetooth headphones can exfiltrate data if you don't have the companion app installed.

You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.

[deleted]

Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)

#30

Post by layoutIfNeeded »

jacquesm wrote: post #10
retrac wrote: post #8

Only a slightly related tangent, but most headphones and other loudspeakers can be very effective microphones when wired into the right circuit. While speakers are often wired directly to a one-way DAC, that's not always the case. Sometimes the analog lines are all fed into a multiplexer and it can be routed to a ADC. Sometimes it's wired to a general purpose IO pin. In such cases, reprogramming could turn that speak…

You can do the opposite of noise cancellation too: determine the back emf from the speaker compared to the audio input, that will give you the audio in the room. So you can use the same circuit both to drive the speaker and use it as a microphone. As good as undetectable until you trace the circuitry of what looks like an ordinary amplifier. The difference is on the order of a few mV but that's more than enough. My p…

No need to use a laser if there’s an incandescent bulb in the room: https://www.wired.com/story/lamphone-light-bulb-vibration-sp...
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