> "Bose Connect app was found to be tracking what users were listening to and sending that data back to the company to be sold".
I did not know that!
Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
141–150 of 431 posts
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#142I tend to use passive headphones with 3.5mm jack, they have no electronics in them except the small speakers. They do not collect data. They are also used by musicians when doing audio mixing so its should sounds neutral and good. That the headphones does not have electronics and batteries means they will last longer and thus be be better for the environment.
> they will last longer and thus be be better for the environment This isn’t necessarily true. My wireless headphones have been with me for years. My wired earbuds are cheap enough that I can lose or damage them without care. The former are far better for the environment.
The problem is that your wired headphones might break if you're not careful, but if you don't then they will work essentially forever. Your wireless headphones on the other hand will break at some point because the tiny lithium battery inside them will eventually stop holding charge. It's not a question of if but when.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#143Only 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…
See SPEAKE(a)R: Turn Speakers to Microphones for Fun and Profit https://arxiv.org/abs/1611.07350
If you are a hacker who removed microphones from your computer but is worrying about this exploit, fortunately, a simple mitigation is possible - just put an audio amplifier or unity-gain buffer between the speaker and the audio output port, so the audio signal cannot travel back to the audio chip. Any "Hi-Fi" headphone amplifier can be used, but a $0.5 opamp is enough - a daughterboard can be tiny enough to fit inside a laptop.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#144Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they will last longer and thus be be better for the environment This isn’t necessarily true. My wireless headphones have been with me for years. My wired earbuds are cheap enough that I can lose or damage them without care. The former are far better for the environment.
My Sennheiser HD25 have been with me for 10 years and I stepped on them, dropped them used them outside in the rain, in sub zero degrees and three times a week while jogging. 10 years of that is a heavy thing to survive. In fact I know hardly any object that would have survived this long.
I bought $100 wired 'gaming' headphones 8 years ago and they still sound amazing and are as comfortable as when I bought them. I didn't give a shit about handling them well, since they were only $100 and seemed to have a very durable construction. The earpads are starting to get torn up from use, but those cost $10 to replace. The headband cushion is nonreplaceable but is only just starting to show any wear now.
Well-built wireless headphones have a lifespan of a few years; well-built wired headphones have a lifespan of ∞, as long as they are designed so that the wear parts can be replaced (earcups, headband cushion, cable).
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#145Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#146Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.
Why do my headphones need firmware updates? Presumably they work fine at purchase.
Because they have complex software in for bluetooth connection, noise cancellation and other behaviours like automatically switching off when taken out for example. You don't have to update it of you prefer not to.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#147Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just value adds, you can listen just fine without them. You might lose (in the case of the headphones that lead to the article) some fitness tracking features, ANC or EQ fine-tuning, or other additional functionality but they'll work just fine for audio.
To add to this list, they also let us upgrade firmware.
Bose has a computer-based firmware updater over USB, I used it with their relatively new noise cancelling 700 headphones since I don't use the Bose Music app. Website launches a Windows desktop application for the update. Worked great in a Windows virtual machine with USB passthrough.
For older QC35 headphones there's a 'based-connect' repo on github that lets you configure the headphones; unfortunately the newer models such as the NC700 have encrypted firmware update files so I couldn't easily reverse engineer the protocol to get all the BT commands to configure all the options you can change in the app. Actually the app didn't even work on my Android phone without GApps, so I couldn't sniff the connection either...
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#148Earlier quoted context omitted.
Everyone, including headphone manufacturers, are trying to get in on the gold rush that is turning their customers into fonts of personal data that can be sold to the highest bidder.
I see this sentiment mentioned a lot, but who actually pays for this data? Is there a company I can call that will buy my amorphous "user data"? What are their names?
One user is worthless, a few pennies. A million and things get interesting.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#149Earlier quoted context omitted.
You also can't get firmware updates if you don't install the companion app and allow them to spy on you.
Why on EARTH would anyone EVER need to update firmware for a pair of headphones? That's asinine.
To work around Bluetooth bugs in newer phones/OSes that come out.
Bluetooth stacks constantly get broken with new revisions, the burden is unfortunately placed on individual device makers to update to work with whatever has broken recently.
Re: Headphones are collecting too much personal data (2019)
#150Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this sentiment mentioned a lot, but who actually pays for this data? Is there a company I can call that will buy my amorphous "user data"? What are their names?
One user is worthless, a few pennies. A million and things get interesting.
Say I have a database full of metrics, user agents, IPs, GPS, names, addresses, photos, etc. on a million users, who would I call to sell it? Genuinely curious.