Has Phone Ad technology developed to the point where it registers your off-line keywords?

[rakovsky]

They Can Hear You Now: Verizon Patent Could Listen In On Customers
Benjamin Fearnow December 4, 2012
CBS: DC

WASHINGTON (CBS DC) — Verizon has filed a patent for targeting ads that collect information from infrared cameras and microphones that can detect the amount of people and types of conversations happening in customers’ living rooms.

The set-top box technology is not the first of its kind – Comcast patented similar monitoring technology in 2008 that recommended content to users based on people it recognized in the room. Google TV also proposed a patent that would use video and audio recorders to figure out exactly how many people in a room were watching its broadcast.

<<CAR DEALERSHIP AD FOR MY LOCAL AREA>>

<<COLLEGE NAMED AFTER MY COUNTY - AD CHOICES>>

Verizon filed for the application in May 2011, but the documents were first uncovered by CBS DC last week due to laws stating that all patent applications be published after 18 months.

The Verizon patent gives examples of the DVR’s acute sensitivity in customers’ living rooms: argument sounds prompt ads for marriage counseling, and sounds of “cuddling” prompt ads for contraceptives. “Physical attributes” detected by the device’s sensors can also be used to target advertisements, with one example citing cosmetic and clothing brands that would be best-suited for the customers’ body size and height.

“If detection facility detects one or more words spoken by a user (e.g., while talking to another user within the same room or on the telephone), advertising facility may utilize the one or more words spoken by the user to search for and/or select an advertisement associated with the one or more words,” Verizon states in the patent application.

...
Verizon officials declined to comment to FierceCable about the patent application, but did release the following statement to CBS Radio in Washington: “Verizon has a well-established track record of respecting its customers’ privacy and protecting their personal information. As a company that prizes innovation, Verizon takes pride in its innovators whose work is represented in our patents and patent applications. While we do not comment on pending patent applications, such futuristic patent filings by innovators are routine, and whatever we might do in the future would be in line with our well-established track record of respecting our customers’ privacy and protecting their personal information.”

http://washington.cbslocal.com/2012/12/04/they-can-hear-you-now-verizon-patent-listens-in-on-customers/

Tony Morbin
March 14, 2016
Are your conversations being recorded to target advertisements at you?
http://www.scmagazine.com/are-your-conversations-being-recorded-to-target-advertisements-at-you/article/482918/

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David Lodge at Pen Test Partners wrote a mobile app, whose terms and conditions included permissions to record, installed it in the researchers' phone, and hooked up to a third party processing voice-totext service, which then sent that text to another third party – Pen Test Partners. The text results were presented in real time on screen. Muro said, “Anyone with a modicum of Android or iOS coding skills could have done this, demonstrating that it is perfectly possible that numerous mobile apps could snoop on conversations.” If the phone had a data connection – broadband, WiFi or whatever, it would listen.

The user had to download, and install the app, and the user had to accept permissions – and most don't review permissions. Munro noted how Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many other social media mobile apps already give themselves ‘record audio' permission, adding: “No-one is saying that they use it, but microphone access is widespread. It's very common and people don't understand the implications.”

Although iOS could have been used in the same way, the test app was carried out on Android as it would have been easier to get onto its apps store, though this one was not put into any online store, “We downloaded to our device – we are not putting rogue apps into the wild,” confirmed Munro.

...
Munro said that it would be difficult to determine if it really is happening in the wild, as some of the claims came from tablet users, some from phones, and there are an increasing number of TVs running these apps. He noted how TVs may be listening to you in the future – as its not much of a stretch to use them to deliver customised adverts or just snoop on people.

Both Munro and the BBC agreed that it could still be coincidence – or could just have been based on other things, such as people picking up on references to things they have been discussing. It could be the result of a third party developer who left code intentionally or unintentionally.

However, if an app was snooping on you, it would be very difficult to determine without looking on the devices. The next step would be figuring out a way to review large numbers of apps in the stores to see if any are actually taking your voice data. You could check your device for forensic investigation so it would be possible to find the rogue code – and Ken Munro welcomes the opportunity to check your device if you believe you are a victim.

Is victim the right word though? After all, what law is broken if you've given permission in the terms and conditions – but who would contend that this was informed consent?
http://www.scmagazine.com/are-your-conversations-being-recorded-to-target-advertisements-at-you/article/482918/

Is Facebook Secretly Listening to You to Target Ads?

Do you think it's possible that Facebook could be listening to your conversations to target ads? Let us know in the comments.

It's a powerful marketing tool, for sure. Through a series of clicks, Facebook can take a guess at what you like, want, and need. It's likely pretty accurate, for the most part.

What's more accurate, however, is literally hearing someone say it.


....
Is this possible?

Well, Facebook and/or Instagram would have to have access to your microphone. Both do, of course, if you've given them permission.

Instagram has been asking users for microphone access for a little under a year – right around the time the company unveiled Instagram video. "Why is Instagram asking for permission to use my phone's microphone?" asks a question on Instagram's help page. Answer: "This permission allows Instagram to use your phone's microphone to capture sound when recording a video."

Facebook – as well as Facebook Messenger – can also request access to your phone or tablet's microphone. You may recall that Facebook found itself in a bit of hot water last summer over a new feature dubbed passive listening. In May of 2014, Facebook announced a new opt-in feature that allows the social network to listen to a user's activity and use what it hears to help identify songs, TV shows, and movies for the purpose of crafting status updates. Basically, you give Facebook access to your microphone, it hears you watching Inglorious Basterds in the background, and automatically crafts a I'm watching Inglorious Basterds status update for you.

Facebook responded, saying it was not always listening.

“The microphone doesn’t turn itself on, it will ask for permission. It’s not always listening…so it’s very limited in what it is sampling,” Facebook Security Infrastructure head Gregg Stefancik said. “I wouldn’t want this in my pocket either if it was recording everything going on around me.”

Facebook elaborated in a "debunking myths" post:

Myth: The feature listens to and stores your conversations.

Fact: Nope, no matter how interesting your conversation, this feature does not store sound or recordings. Facebook isn't listening to or storing your conversations. Here's how it works: if you choose to turn the feature on, when you write a status update, the app converts any sound into an audio fingerprint on your phone. This fingerprint is sent to our servers to try and match it against our database of audio and TV fingerprints. By design, we do not store fingerprints from your device for any amount of time. And in any event, the fingerprints can't be reversed into the original audio because they don't contain enough information.

But the specificity of which these Facebook users described their tests of concept, well, it intrigued me.

So I opened up Facebook on my desktop. I had one sidebar ad – for Blue Apron, a meal delivery service. I don't like Blue Apron on Facebook, and I don't follow them on Instagram. I've never searched for Blue Apron and I most certainly have never visited the company's website. I do post a lot of food photos, however.

Then I remembered something – a brief conversation a friend and I had had on Sunday night about Blue Apron. She'd let me try a chicken pot pie that she'd cooked based on a Blue Apron recipe. We both mentioned the name "Blue Apron" a couple of times, and went about our Oscars-watching.

Now, I had a Facebook ad for it.

Naturally, I told my friend and co-worker Chris Crum about this. We mentioned Blue Apron several times.

Twenty minutes later, Chris had a Facebook ad for Blue Apron. Like me, Chris doesn't like Blue Apron on Facebook, and he doesn't follow them on Instagram.
...
Coincidence? Quite possibly. Frequency Illusion? Maybe. Everything here is purely anecdotal.

But one's an incident, two's a coincidence, and three's a pattern, right?

This isn't the first time people have noticed that Facebook has a weird ability to know exactly what you were just talking about. People were complaining about this over a year ago – in Facebook's own community help center.
http://www.webpronews.com/facebook-listens-2015-02/

What do you think?

[DetlefK]

1. Great. Now they want to bombard us with commercials in our appartments.

TV is 25% commercial breaks.
And sometimes they run a commercial IN THE MIDST OF A SHOW, OBSCURING THE STUFF YOU ARE TRYING TO ACTUALLY WATCH.

Step outside and there are ads on every inch of public space.

Internet? Ads everywhere.

Use Windows 10?
Windows 10 is showing you ads IN YOUR F**KING START-MENU.

Smartphone?
Undeletable, preinstalled Apps. Which also counts as ads.




And now they want to put ads in our appartments.





Oh, and btw:
While Verizon furiously denies that they are recording and evaluating what you are saying in your own appartment, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny (there was a FOIA-request) that they are hacking such devices to spy on people.

[drm604]

2. This kind of thing needs to be outlawed.

It should be illegal to monitor visual or audio information (or any other environmental information) without permission and the granting of services should not be conditioned on those permissions. All cameras and microphones should have on-off hard switches.