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posted by cmn32480 on Saturday November 14 2015, @11:05PM   Printer-friendly
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.


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  • (Score: 5, Informative) by frojack on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:57AM

    by frojack (1554) on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:57AM (#263561) Journal

    However, I find it very annoying not only to have my own stuff "hacked" for their purposes

    Before you get all incensed, lets first ascertain if this is true.

    After all, you have to hack two systems:
    1) you have to get a constant listener onto a a significant percentage of phones in your target ares. You would have to induce a lot of people to download a common app, and launch that app while watching TV.
    Then you have to make sure the sound broadcast is not at audio frequencies above the capabilities of the microphone and the cell phone's circuitry.

    2) second, you have to embed this sound in advertising, and the PAY BIG money to air those ads. BUT: You have to somehow get this sound into an advertisement for broadcast over a network that you can not be sure carries sounds of that high frequency. I don't know if that is possible. The sound channel on NTSC is crammed into 25mhz FM, which is exactly 1/3 of the bandwidth of FM radio. (Into that 25mhz they have to allow for stereo, and or maybe up to 5 different languages).
    However, when TV went digital sound went to AAC. (128 kbit/s, or 320 kbit/s ) So it MIGHT be possible for the broadcast to actually carry the high pitched sound.

    But can the TV speakers and sound system realistically reproduce sound of that frequency?

    The story suggest this as a possible mode of surveying devices. But somehow this gets assumed into existence.

    In actuality the article says:

    The user is unaware of the audio beacon, but if a smart device has an app on it that uses the SilverPush software development kit,

    That's a big IF?

    The article says several companies are WORKING on this. Nobody has deployed it. Certainly not into a regulated broadcast environment.

    So maybe calm down. Write the FCC or your congressman or something.

    --
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  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Hyperturtle on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:01PM

    by Hyperturtle (2824) on Sunday November 15 2015, @04:01PM (#263673)

    That big if you mention is only how the user knows its happening. You need to install the developer app to have any idea this is going on.

    If you do not install the developer app, there is No Indication that this is happening.

    And I thought there was already established precedent. The only convenient example I have that everyone can look up would be the new Google router. $200 for device that requires you to install an app to configure what few settings it lets you touch.

    Google intends to do the same things via communication with sound, via with their IoT stuff called weave/thread. Even their onhub thing has a microphone and speaker. Not many routers that just route need something like that.

    The ars technica article misses a lot of the point; that really loud initial setup sound it makes is just a first impression thing. Google is not known to loudly collect data and draw your attention to that fact.

    Nor is this Vizio application -- they're using existing protocols, they didn't make it up. Their app is just their special way of doing it. Anyway, anyone that wants to remote control their TV or program it to record or whatever is going to install the app on something.

    There will be no indication to the user, aside from specifically targeted ads, that anything is happening that would be tracking them.

    Unless they install the developer version of the application for the TV/ad delivery program.

    Note this isn't just related to ads. the entire IoT ecosystem can depend on this, and you wouldn't want updates each time a status message is logged.

    This is treated the same way, and people are being treated like they are just there to be manipulated as part of the IoT.

    This is becoming an issue like how paid toliets were a thing, once upon a time. Free Market, they called it. People rebelled to put an end to pay toliets -- I wish we'd all rebel to put an end to this sort of tracking, being built into everything we own, and even costing us extra when the data charges and electricity used is added up by our spending, not the spending of those reaping the profits of how we were monetized.