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In Leak, Facebook Partner Brags About Listening to Your Phone’s Microphone to Serve Ads for Stuff You Mention

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The original article is behind a paywall at 404media.

In a pitch deck to prospective customers, one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners explained how it listens to users’ smartphone microphones and advertises to them accordingly.

As 404 Media reports based on documents leaked to its reporters, the TV and radio news giant Cox Media Group (CMG) claims that its so-called “Active Listening” software uses artificial intelligence (AI) to “capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations.”

“Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers,” the deck continues.

In the same slideshow, CMG counted Facebook, Google, and Amazon as clients of its “Active Listening” service. After 404 reached out to Google about its partnership, the tech giant removed the media group from the site for its “Partners Program,” which prompted Meta, the owner of Facebook, to admit that it is reviewing CMG to see if it violates any of its terms of service.

An Amazon spokesperson, meanwhile, told 404 that its Ads arm "has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so. The spox added, confusingly, that if one of its marketing partners violates its rules, the company will take action.

aefinity ,
@aefinity@theculture.social avatar

It’s not the first time CMG has made that claim (arstechnica.com/…/no-a-marketing-firm-isnt-tappin…) and it’s not any more credible this time around, although conspiracy theorists will have another field day.

p03locke ,
@p03locke@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

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.”

That doesn’t sound like kooky bullshit to me. That sounds exactly like what the OP’s title suggests.

dylanmorgan ,

I know little to nothing about android, but it seems like even if we assume CMG code is in (say) all of Facebook’s iOS apps, each one needs permission to use the camera and microphone so if you deny that permission what CMG claims would be impossible. And while Apple certainly has a spotty record in enforcing App Store rules, I feel like they’ve got a lot riding on being absolutely certain that FB and Google and Amazon apps aren’t violating those rules because those are going to be on every researcher’s list of apps to test for privacy compliance.

Mac ,

yes but 99% of users give free access to everything.

boonhet ,

I’m no conspiracy theorist, but if I needed to discuss anything legal, I wouldn’t want to do it near a phone. Or a newish car. Or a smart TV…

The list of things that could be listening to us if there’s a vulnerability for the 3 letter agencies to exploit, is ridiculous. And outside of phone and desktop operating systems, few things get regular secrity updates.

sunzu2 ,

We would never listen to your mics, our gos are just that good...

Trust us bro.

Phen ,

Well we always accused Meta of listening. If it was their partners, they technically weren’t lying when they said they weren’t. “we don’t need to listen to you” was technically correct too, it just missed one word: “we don’t need to listen to you ourselves”

sunzu2 ,

Technically, this is why I assume corpos are lying 100% of the time unless proven otherwise.

Bad faith actors should not get benefit of the doubt yet we have adult people calling otherwise tech illiterate or conspiracy theorists because they report this experience...

Looks like at least sometimes they were not making it up lol

darcmage ,

Or how about not assuming either way and waiting for proof before believing narratives. Anything else occupies the same space as conspiracy theories.

The math on anyone always listening to everyone’s phones doesn’t add up and will not any time in the near future.

sunzu2 ,

Yeah bro let me install this app on my phone ...

I trust it won't listen because facebook said so and will only remove it once it is 100% confirmed that it is in fact listening 🤡

OR

Stop using shit applications that need needless access lol

Phen ,

I believed they maybe weren’t listening because those cases that people claim as “proof” of listening can usually be explained in other ways as well. People tend to assume they were listening because its the easier explanation but with the amount of data that Meta has, they can easily lead people into thinking about things by showing specific posts on the Facebook timeline and also predict to some extent what people may end up talking about based on things like how many times you replay a certain video and how long did you keep certain posts in focus on the screen and that sort of stuff that people often don’t realize is also data for them.

Still, I would never put my hand on fire for them and never completely discarded the possibility of them listening.

darcmage ,

We literally have wireshark and similar utilities available to all of us to inspect every packet of data coming in to and leaving our phones. You can install pcapdroid right now to see exactly what facebook is doing and where that data is going. This is not complicated stuff.

Now imagine the payday and notoriety that’ll go to the security research firm that is doing this kind of work on a regular basis and is able to definitively prove it’s happening. Why do you think that hasn’t happened yet?

GenderNeutralBro ,

I keep seeing this claim, but never with any independent verification or technical explanation.

What exactly is listening to you? How? When?

Android and iOS both make it visible to the user when an app accesses the microphone, and they require that the user grant microphone permission to the app. It’s not supposed to be possible for apps to surreptitiously record you. This would require exploiting an unpatched security vulnerability and would surely violate the App Store and Play Store policies.

If you can prove this is happening, then please do so. Both Apple and Google have a vested interest in stopping this; they do not want their competitors to have this data, and they would be happy to smack down a clear violation of policy.

skullgiver ,
@skullgiver@popplesburger.hilciferous.nl avatar

Apple and Google turn a blind eye to large apps. App stores need Facebook more than Facebook needs the app stores.

That said, they need some pretty complicated bypasses to not show a microphone icon every time they try to listen in.

I believe these apps will listen in on calls and maybe voice messages, but they’re not enabling the microphone 24/7.

bbbhltz ,
@bbbhltz@beehaw.org avatar

(just gonna be annoying and note that the 404 Media article isn’t a true “paywall”, they addressed this on their blog: www.404media.co/why-404-media-needs-your-email-ad…. If you create an account you don’t need to pay and they email the published articles in full every day.)

GooberEar ,

Earlier this year one of my relatives came for an extended visit. We were discussing what we might have for dinner that week and both of us were on board for the same ingredients, such as asparagus. My relative was also happy with the video services I’m currently subscribed to because I have a couple options they don’t have at home, so they were telling me about how they were rewatching some older Harrison Ford movies. And then there’s the age-old (or old age) conversations about our current health issues.

In the following days, my relative kept bringing up the fact that their phone and tablet are listening to our conversations. Proof? After we had the food conversation, their news feed was suddenly filled with asparagus recipes. They were also getting ads for more Harrison Ford content on the service that they don’t subscribe to. And to top it off, they were seeing ads for a prescription my dog takes but that they had never even heard of before our conversation the day or two before. Isn’t it obvious? They’re listening to our conversations.

To me this was easily explainable by Occam’s Razor. All our devices are on the same IP address. After we discussed the asparagus I went online that night and did a search for asparagus recipes. And when we were talking about my dog’s health condition, I used my phone to look up the active ingredient because I couldn’t recall off the top of my head. Plus, when Hulu or whatever random service sees you’re watching a lot of Harrison Ford movies, it makes sense they’d advertise others you might like.

That makes a lot more sense and is a lot less complicated of an explanation than “our devices are always recording our conversations and uploading them to the internet as a basis to send us advertisements”.

Sure it’s technically feasible, but if it were happening, surely they would be a lot more incontrovertible proof than a questionable and likely misinterpreted news source that seems to be more of a “sly” advertisement for a tech solution that the big players aren’t actually using.

Midnitte ,

This.

If they were listening, that means they’d have to transmit that voice data, then they’d have to use models to understand that data, then do all that shit - I think there would be a ton of evidence of that (at the very least, someone would have done some verified packet sniffing).

There’s a lot easier ways to get the same job done, and there’s solutions to it

Lifebandit666 ,

I had a friend bring up this very topic this weekend and I replied “What would be more creepy and more likely is that the ad giants have algorithms for working out what you’ll buy that are that good that they know what you want before you do and you’re just noticing how good it is”

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