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Dystopian corporate surveillance threats today come at us from all directions. Companies offer "always-on" devices that listen for our voice commands, and marketers follow us around the web to create personalized user profiles so they can (maybe) show us ads we'll actually click. Now marketers have been experimenting with combining those web-based and audio approaches to track consumers in another disturbingly science fictional way: with audio signals your phone can hear, but you can't. And though you probably have no idea that dog whistle marketing is going on, researchers are already offering ways to protect yourself.
The technology, called ultrasonic cross-device tracking, embeds high-frequency tones that are inaudible to humans in advertisements, web pages, and even physical locations like retail stores. These ultrasound "beacons" emit their audio sequences with speakers, and almost any device microphone—like those accessed by an app on a smartphone or tablet—can detect the signal and start to put together a picture of what ads you've seen, what sites you've perused, and even where you've been. Now that you're sufficiently concerned, the good news is that at the Black Hat Europe security conference on Thursday, a group based at University of California, Santa Barbara will present an Android patch and a Chrome extension that give consumers more control over the transmission and receipt of ultrasonic pitches on their devices.
In Saks, no one can hear you(r phone) scream.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 05 2016, @03:28PM
The more modern "feature phones" include Android phones from such manufacturers as LG and Samsung. I'm defining "feature phone" as a cheap throwaway, $50 US or less, often times packaged by the second tier telcos with a pay as you go plan. I have a throwaway for which I paid only $20, it has a couple gig of storage, I can install apps, it will run Google play, on-screen keypad - it's almost like an expensive Android. The only real problem I've had with it, is that it fails to recognize SD storage. The distributor probably disabled the SD storage, and if I were smart enough, I could probably reenable it.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday November 05 2016, @04:35PM
You usually just have to install a mini-SD card in it. Please don't tell us you didn't RTFM.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday November 05 2016, @05:08PM
RTFM - the same card that works in multiple other phones isn't seen by this phone. It just isn't seen. I did some poking around on the net, but haven't researched it seriously yet. Most phones are just plug and play, this one is not.