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I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

simonwillison.net

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Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#11

Post by janice1999 »

simonw wrote: post #4
floxy wrote: post #3

I think the article would be improved if he added a bit about what evidence he would accept.

Show me some sniffed network traffic demonstrating an app sending that data back to a server. Discovery in a lawsuit. Credible insider leaks confirming this happens and how.

How about a pitch deck for a company [1] claiming it can offer microphone eavesdropping based ad targeting [2]? Maybe that was still aspirational though.

TVs and cars have microphones now and are privacy nightmares. Car companies have patents [3] for in-car keyword based ad targeting. Without legalisation, it's really only a matter of time.

[1] https://www.fastcompany.com/90999277/cox-cmg-active-listenin...

https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list...

[2] https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/24224884-how-voice-d...

[3] https://www.pcmag.com/news/ford-patents-in-car-advertising-s...

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#13

Post by arcmechanica »

jere wrote: post #10

My experience working at one of the companies that gets accused of this a lot is that many colleagues wish we were as evil as claimed because it would be so much easier do their jobs that way than struggling through the reality of it which is endless red tape over the tiniest issues that have even the slightest proximity to privacy. So I've been a bit skeptical too.

[dead]

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#16

Post by ch_ase »

We search for everything we talk about these days…our location services are always on. The times I’ve noticed this I can usually trace it back to a friend had been searching for something and then we (our phones) were in the same place. Even the guy from the lawsuit with the doctor… his phone knows he was at that doctor and that doctor offers that procedure. Seems possible without listening.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#17

Post by alex1138 »

arcmechanica wrote: post #13
jere wrote: post #10

My experience working at one of the companies that gets accused of this a lot is that many colleagues wish we were as evil as claimed because it would be so much easier do their jobs that way than struggling through the reality of it which is endless red tape over the tiniest issues that have even the slightest proximity to privacy. So I've been a bit skeptical too.

[dead]

Citation for Apple?

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#18

Post by renewiltord »

As of 2019 (my last contact with the industry), there was no real-time onboarding solution that could do this. Or if it existed it wasn't good enough to attract any attention. People were saying this in 2014 or so. I remember around 2017 thinking it would be pretty cool (repurpose wake-word detection to do some pre-determined segments or something) but no-one had it working. There's all sorts of stuff going on behind the scenes in ad tech and if https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=manigandham would probably have something useful to share if he was still around.

But it wasn't real. Even back then people would publish "sources" saying it was being done, but I'm telling you that if it worked well people would be doing it and we were in the middle of it all and couldn't find anyone who was.

There were smart-devices that acted as beacons to report people to ICE and stuff like that and they used personal data to tie it together. So there was crazy stuff out there (none tied to the respectable ad tech industry HN knows as the "privacy-violators" and so on). But this specific thing wasn't there.

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#19

Post by bbor »

jere wrote: post #10

My experience working at one of the companies that gets accused of this a lot is that many colleagues wish we were as evil as claimed because it would be so much easier do their jobs that way than struggling through the reality of it which is endless red tape over the tiniest issues that have even the slightest proximity to privacy. So I've been a bit skeptical too.

Yup - having worked at Google Display Ads (arguably the epicenter of such talk), I personally only ever witnessed people walking the walk, privacy-wise. The threats to our privacy are quite public and not at all illegal; IMO data brokers and 3P browser trackers are at the top of the list, but all of Google’s known ills are there too (location tracking, exchange monopolization, allowing predatory advertisers, gestures broadly at chrome, etc etc etc).

They don’t need to be listening to us, and wouldn’t know how to even begin hiding it if they were. Something like that would require tons of compute and thousands of conspirators risking massive backlash, all to prop up a relatively tiny part of their business.

> Convincing people of this is basically impossible

Absolutely correct IME, btw. This is one of those things a smart engineer learns not to argue online, or at the Christmas dinner table for that matter. People tend to stand their ground on this one and move quickly to accusations of bias and naïveté…

Re: I still don't think companies serve you ads based on your microphone

#20

Post by chaps »

fanf2 wrote: post #8
simonw wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Show me some sniffed network traffic demonstrating an app sending that data back to a server. Discovery in a lawsuit. Credible insider leaks confirming this happens and how.

Cox Media Group selling a product that uses captured audio to target ads https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list...

I trust that the pitch deck is accurate, but I also have no idea the extent of its use or if it was even used.

Has anyone done a public low-level analysis of these systems with questions like, where the data goes, the quality of the stream, how the data is then used/abused, etc?

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