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from the always-listening-to-our-customers dept.
Synchronizing email, texts, calendar, bookmarks, contacts, notes, git? Done.
Synchronizing what ads you heard when you had your phone in your pocket, and you tablet on the train, and you computer on your desk? Also done.
ArsTechnica (UK) has an article about synchronizing consumer and friend's device use without consumer involvement.
The ultrasonic pitches are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While the sound can't be heard by the human ear, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product.
Cross-device tracking raises important privacy concerns, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in recently filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission. The FTC has scheduled a workshop on Monday to discuss the technology. Often, people use as many as five connected devices throughout a given day—a phone, computer, tablet, wearable health device, and an RFID-enabled access fob. Until now, there hasn't been an easy way to track activity on one and tie it to another.
"As a person goes about her business, her activity on each device generates different data streams about her preferences and behavior that are siloed in these devices and services that mediate them," CDT officials wrote. "Cross-device tracking allows marketers to combine these streams by linking them to the same individual, enhancing the granularity of what they know about that person."
According to TechCrunch, Silverpush says it "isn't receiving any actual audio data" from some 18 million smartphones.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by K_benzoate on Saturday November 14 2015, @11:38PM
At least in iOS (I've never used Android so I don't know how granular their permission system is) you have to give specific apps access to your microphone, and when the phone is muted it's impossible for a 3rd party app to override that and produce sound. I am in the habit of zealously overlooking my permissions list and revoking any that seem unnecessary or haven't been used in a while. There's no legitimate reason for most apps to use the camera/mic/speakers, so my default orientation is to deny all requests and only selectively give back access when *I* need some functionality.
This system of subsonic sounds for tracking is repugnant to me on many levels but the only one that really matters from an ethics point of view is lack of consent, implied or otherwise. Even if you could bamboozle someone into mindlessly clicking "accept" when permission is asked, you haven't gotten INFORMED consent, so you're still in the wrong. If this is being forced on people without their knowledge entirely (which seems to be the case), it's a violation of their rights and a misappropriation of their property (computing resources, bandwidth). That seems like a legally actionable offense.
Climate change is real and primarily caused by human activity.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Saturday November 14 2015, @11:45PM
The permissions requirement is the big issue here. It's not as if this technique can be used between browsers. (If W3C ever come up with a way to do microphone-to-the-browser, I imagine it'll be opt-in with the browser asking the user whether to allow it.)
If you've got a naughty app with lots of permissions, you're already screwed. Location-tracking can already be done, after all.