this post was submitted on 27 Dec 2023
322 points (99.1% liked)

Technology

59463 readers
4545 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
L3s
[email protected]
[email protected]
L4s
enu
322
Cox deletes ‘Active Listening’ ad pitch after boasting that it eavesdrops though our phones (www.fastcompany.com)
submitted 10 months ago by L4s to c/technology
65 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Cox deletes ‘Active Listening’ ad pitch after boasting that it eavesdrops though our phones::undefined

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 20 points 10 months ago (10 children)

this was such a weird claim, and I never really understood how it could be true specifically for phones, where they aren't in control of system software. there's like a gradient of possibility here:

  • Android phones from major manufacturers, and Apple phones: doubt it. those things are too heavily scrutinized, someone would've found it, and the companies that make them don't have the impetus.
  • official "smart" voice devices from Amazon, Google, et al: doubt it, same reasoning as above
  • Android phones from small players, heavily subsidized models, etc.: sure, could be
  • smart TVs from major manufacturers: probably not? medium "maybe"? I bought one of these with a hardware mic switch so I guess that shows my paranoia
  • other smart TVs: I dunno, feels highly likely

so: I'm careful about what I use so my risk felt pretty low, but I also feel like if this were true security researchers would've discovered it. let alone the fact that what they describe is bandwidth and battery intensive (off-device or on-device respectively, I don't remember what they claimed as I read the 404 media report some weeks back) but it still makes me wonder: what led them to make these claims then? fascinating, pretty scary.

[–] dan_linder 6 points 10 months ago

My take is two fold: 1- Marketing over selling their product (common practice) 2- The "always listening" devices are mainly their Smart Remotes that have a microphone built in.

#2 Seems the most likely as is a device fully in their control and can pull as much ad marketing / information gathering details from it as they want.

load more comments (9 replies)