Is your phone listening? Here's what marketing firm claimed - Check details
Sometimes people experience a few occurrences where they suddenly come across ads for products they have been talking about on their devices without searching for them on the internet. It seems that it is more than just a coincidence or targeted advertising tactic.
Is your phone listening?
We all fear that firms like Facebook or Instagram listen to our conversations and phone calls and also track our online activities. However, now, a marketing firm has confirmed all our fears. Sometimes people experience a few occurrences where they suddenly come across ads for products they have been talking about on their devices without searching for them on the internet. It seems that it is more than just a coincidence or targeted advertising tactic.
Active Listening
As per a recent report, a marketing firm has substantiated that smartphones are not just tracking users’ online activities but also actively listening to spoken words when users are near their phones. The company has claimed that smartphones listen to users. Conversation through “active listening” technology. The marketing firm that signifies digital giants such as Facebook and Google has admitted that it has been utilizing software to record users’ chats with their device microphones.
Cox Media Group
One of the major names in the media field, Cox Media Group (CMG), has claimed to have designed a tool that can record and assess background conversation utilizing microphones of smartphones, smart TVs, and other electronic gadgets. This tool uses Artificial intelligence (AI) known as “Active Listening,” to collect real-time data in real-time of prospective purchases from consumers. This technology can also identify potential consumers by monitoring their conversations and showing ads that match their expressed interests.
Can collect and assess voice
The ‘active listening’ tool syndicates speech statistics gathered from standard conversations with behavioural information collected from customers’ internet activity. CMG asserts that the resilient combination lets advertisers target consumers more accurately than ever. As per the report, when CMG presented its tool to investors and revealed that it can collect and assess voice and behavioural information from over 470 sources, the range of this activity became apparent. It is beyond predictable web tracking methods, which provides advertisers with greater insight into the objectives and behaviour of their consumers.
Is this Legal?
The conduct of targeted ads differs across the world's data privacy regulations. Relatively, that personal information should be processed transparently and securely. In India, data privacy rules offer consumer agreement for the usage of consumer data in targeted ads and let customers pull out of these practices.
The impact on users
As per the now-deleted statement from CMG, users give consent to active listening whenever they install a new application or update an existing app. It reveals the most alarming issue that people might have voluntarily given consent to be monitored as most users do not go through the fine-printed terms and conditions diligently as they more often contain conditions that carry out such invasive activities. This outlines major ethical and legal concerns by allowing the technology to be utilized without proper and informed consent.