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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

#111

Post by drewcoo »

bbor wrote: post #40
jgalt212 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not trying to change your mind, but this response (from another user) was flagged, so I'm providing a pull quote. > A marketing firm called Cox Media Group has recently revealed that it is listening to user conversations via their smartphones through its so-called "Active Listening" Software. With this, the company will push advertisements that users will see on certain platforms based on the heard conversations…

Ahh this one. Thanks for sharing, important point! Basically this is just a random small-ish company trying to get new clients with a flashy feature. Ultimately they have to use the same data as everyone else, which I’m 99.99% sure doesn’t involve any intentional (much less “active”) recording by Google, Apple, or Meta. Maybe they have their own hardware partners that have networked microphones, maybe they’re really…

CMG isn't small or little-known. It's just apparently not your industry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cox_Enterprises

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

#112

Post by Aurornis »

alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

I’m fascinated that this urban legend persists among tech people because it’s so easy to disprove.

Did you know that you can set up a proxy from your phone and capture all traffic from it? It would be so trivial to find the traffic from your phone. There are ways to MITM and inspect the traffic, too.

There are also many people doing static reverse engineering of phone apps looking for security vulnerabilities. To believe this urban legend, you’d also have to believe that none of them have ever encountered this hidden voice analysis code.

If we ignore that, you know there are OS-level security controls on apps, right? iOS and Android don’t make it easy for apps to use the microphone constantly and run in the background to process it.

Finally, if we ignore all of that, how can anyone believe that these companies are recording conversations but none of their employees have ever chosen to blow the whistle? We’ve seen numerous FAANG “whistleblowers” come through with everything down to trivial or baseless complaints, but nobody has blown the whistle on these supposed widespread spying programs?

The whole urban legend is preposterous to anyone who has any experience with apps or phone security, let alone common traffic analysis or reverse engineering tools. I don’t understand why the myth is so persistent among even some technical people.

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

#113

Post by whamlastxmas »

cschep wrote: post #89
zw123456 wrote: post #87

OK, but query me this batman. Lately, I have been inundated by ads for anything to do with Kayaks. I do not own a Kayak. I do not want to own a Kayak and have never even spoken the word as far as I can remember. But for some reason, I am seeing ads for a Kayak carrier, a Kayak launcher, roof rack, you name it. It is so weird. I cannot figure out why suddenly these idiots think I am remotely interested in Kayaking. Ka…

someone probably googled “kayak” from your wifi?

Or they googled fitness or outdoors and live near water

Edit: yep

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

#114

Post by lantry »

protocolture wrote: post #104

I dunno, seems trivial to me. Like if an arduino can reliably carry 1 wakeword, an iphone could carry what? 64 at minimum? Instead of waking up recording the conversation and sending it to the stasi, it could just toggle a bool in your secret advertising profile, then sync that up at random intervals. They dont need context, they just need "Biscuit" "Nappies" "Birthday". Not to say it isn't all made up. It probably i…

But if you're listening for 64, or even 1024 wake words, you won't get to the level of granularity people are claiming to observe, like in the other comment here where they tested "pool fencing". If you were putting together a list of 64 words, would you really include "pool fencing"?

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

#115

Post by thayne »

jprete wrote: post #2

> ...they would need to be feeding those snippets in almost real time into a system which forwards them onto advertising partners who then feed that information into targeting networks... I think this is totally mistaken. An ad seller which also wants to respect privacy keeps this data in-house and does the ad targeting themselves. The advertiser never needs to see personal information for this kind of market to give…

Also, couldn't a lot of it be done on device? Say, have a set of key phrases to listen for, and if the device hears them, then mark that the user should be targeted by certain kinds of ads.

I don't have any evidence either way that that happens, but it seems like a more practical way to accomplish it.

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

#116

Post by whycombagator »

derekp7 wrote: post #82
darknavi wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why did they pick a swimming pool? Did they see people in their area installing pools? I think that's often people's best guess, is that the "random" thing people use to test this actually isn't random and subconsciously they already had this topic seeded to them.

Something similar -- while on a family visit at my parents' house, my brother was talking about his upcoming Hawaii trip, Specifically he was going over a snorkeling adventure he signed up for. For the next week or so, I got many ads on my phone about underwater packages for Hawaii, along with ads for various snorkeling and swimming gear. Now I had never researched any of that on my phone, however obviously my brothe…

[flagged]

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

#117

Post by snowwrestler »

This doesn’t seem that hard to test? Put a phone on WiFi, run it through a traffic sniffer, and see if it is constantly sending little audio packets to listener1486.facebook.com or whatever.

Or heck, open up a phone and stick a probe on the mic lead. See when it is getting power or not.

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

#118

Post by solarkraft »

Neither do I. There’s no technical way it can be happening without it being easily spotted, not to mention how many would have to conspire.

However I am still waiting for a comprehensive explanation for how it is actually happening.

There there are many ways to correlate people and their interests, but I wonder how deep it goes. Basic geolocation and public interaction metadata: Sure. But I’ve also heard people believe that it ought to be possible to spot closeness via Wifi and Bluetooth.

This is such a culturally relevant topic that there must be some serious knowledge about it somewhere.

As for my own tests, I’ve made it a point to mention that I’m considering spending money on a well advertised-for product that I haven’t yet searched for online every time this topic comes up. No ads so far. In the next phase I’ll progressively tell more people to start looking it up.

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

#119

Post by 2OEH8eoCRo0 »

snowwrestler wrote: post #99
alvah wrote: post #29

Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…

Think about what this implies. If your phone is listening, it’s listening all the time, right? So like 12-18 hours of continuous audio every day. That’s a lot of ad triggers. Way too many to actually be served with ads during your browsing time, which is a strict subset of your total audible proximity to your phone (plus ad inventory is a strict subset of what you view on your phone). So how does the phone + ad netwo…

My phone can listen all day every day. It listens for "hey google" and it can listen and passively tell you songs that are playing. It's not outside the realm of possibility to do their audio fingerprinting on keywords and what not. The advertising potential makes it extremely juicy

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

#120

Post by snowwrestler »

in-pursuit wrote: post #37

I know someone who worked on smart TV software. They explicitly added audio fingerprinting via integrated microphone so they could determine which programs you were watching for ad profiling. When in the history of online ads have advertisers not used available data?

Ha, I’m imagining a sort of thriller movie villain reveal where people are intently saying silly things into their phones, while the camera slowly pans over to the smart TV in the corner, which is actually listening.
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