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Verizon Patents Eavesdropping Using Your TV For Ad Targeting
MojoKid writes with news of the latest and greatest idea brought to you by a marketing department. From the article: "It's a patent that sounds like a plot description for a science-fiction movie or the result of Apple's Siri and Google's AdSense mating. With it, Verizon could program its set-top boxes to survey a room to determine relevant ads to display either on your television or mobile phone. Sound a bit scary? It kind of is. Verizon's new technology can work a variety of ways. For starters, it can listen in on conversations — whether it be with someone else in the room or on the phone — and pick out keywords that would aid it in its duties. In reality, it's simple stuff in this day and age, but that doesn't make it any less off-putting. Imagine arguing with your significant other and then seeing marriage counseling ads on the TV — or better, cuddling and then seeing ads for contraceptives."
Isn't there prior art from 1984?
(I leave it to you if I meant the year or a certain novell)
"we are all atheists about most of the gods that societies have ever believed in. Some of us just go one god further."
How does this get around wire-tapping laws in the two party states (where both parties need to know there's recording going on)? If someone comes over and watches TV, do you have to tell them or does Verizon since Verizon is the party doing the recording?
So, how would Verizon go about this without it breaking the law? It sounds like eavesdropping, interception of communications and whatever other legal description there is for bugging a room.
I don't think their EULA will protect them from prosecution and civil law suits on this one.
If you haven't already read George Orwell's 1984 , you really should do so. The frequent comparisons between contemporary society and the novel aren't just based on a vague feeling of constant surveillance, which you might imagine if you don't have a knowledge of the book itself, but with things like this even Orwell's specific technology is coming true and even being outdone.
In the novel, the protagonist Winston Smith's television watched him just as he was watching it. He had the advantage of an alcove in his home that wasn't within the view of the "telescreen", where he could sit and keep a secret diary. With this news story and the way microphone technology is evolving, I fear that even retiring to a secluded part of the room to write one's forbidden thoughts will have a Clippyesque mascot pop up on the screen to sell you pens and paper.
I didn't. Did they include a camera too? And here I've been making fun of those guys wearing tinfoil!
"Imagine . . . cuddling and then seeing ads for contraceptives."
If one could actually get past the creepy, peeping-tom, psycho-stalker element of that concept -- which I don't think I could do -- there's still the problem that once you're "cuddling" you've probably already made your contraceptive purchase. And if you haven't, it's a little late for advertising.
Now I'm trying to un-imagine what "cuddling" sounds like.
I am not a crackpot.
Your world !! And you !! Suck it up and stop whining about pending patents that never go anywhere !! Would you rather MS patented it ??!!
This is absolutely FUCKED.
doesn't even begin to describe it.
This is a step too far, and sadly it will impact TVs that monitor your viewing habits for advertising and to report actual legit numbers to TV production companies, which is a shame.
Shame for advertising because advertising isn't a bad thing, just abused by scrubby people and dodgy companies.
I've found some of my most used services and programs through advertising, without it I would be lost.
HUGE shame for viewing figures because the current methods are terribly bad. Not even jokingly bad or anything, it is just sad because so many good shows are cancelled because the demographics are exactly the types of people who wouldn't overly-discuss things or subscribe to newsletters or whatever other metrics these companies claim to use. (and especially not voluntary monitoring)
Sci-fi, horror, obscure comedy, dark comedy, so many other niche areas, they all get cancelled because fans don't obsessively talk about them like they do with, say, reality TV or whatever else. And writing a show to encourage discussion often takes away from the show too, it is all fine and well if you write some mystery in to your show, but it plain doesn't work in some things and can even damage the integrity of the show overall.
Why would you do this Verizon? You know nobody would want this, and now you just damaged a possible future for monitoring TV habits by default. Great one, idiots.
and if your in Georgia and detected as cuddling in the "wrong" way, or with the wrong gender, no doubt the Sodomy police will also get notified!
It's "off putting" to me, so I won't buy one. But look at how people fall all over themselves to use email services that data-mine keywords from their emails for advertising purposes. Look at how people let Facebook snoop their visits not only to facebook, but to a million other sites around the web.
As far as i can tell, people LOVE having parts of their private conversations captured, data-mined for ad keywords, and used to display advertising to them. I see no reason to believe they won't love this too, although I am bewildered at why anyone would. But just watch.... I am always - always, surprised by how little people care about privacy. It seems just the opposite, they actually prefer not having any.
but that's enough to make me switch to Comcast if they actually follow through with this.
As long as the 'verts don't blow up any heads, where's the harm? /sarcasm
Just because it's patented doesn't mean it will ever see the light of day in a working product.
Verizon realizes this is a public relations nightmare and that the backlash would be so ridiculous it would cave their corporate head quarters phone system, along with calls to Senate and House hearings and the CEO's head.
So stand down people we are not on some slippery slope here. If and only if they actually submit a product for testing, should anyone get worked up by this.
Beware the Lollipop of Mediocrity, Lick it once and you suck forever.
"Verizon Patents Eavesdropping Using Your TV For Ad Targeting"
It's not my TV or even yours in which it's installed, it's in the set-top box that decodes the signal and responds to the remote. I'll bet that if it's ever deployed DHS will have a back door.
Nate
now when the commercial comes on and you get up to get snaks or go to the bathroom it'll pause so you don't miss the commercials...
That would be in violation of federal wiretap laws.
The same reason I can't hack into your webcam.
Of course if you authorize it then all bets are off.
I bet anything that police / courts will determine that a warrant is not necessary to intercept this eavesdropping since it was already there (or some other flimsy reasoning). Instant audio bug.
It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
...and how is this different from Google reading all your mail discussions and targeting ads to you? You've already accepted that a corporation can listen to your conversations and build a profile of your likely purchasing habits. Does the difference in medium - from text to audio - really make that much difference?
Hollywood, Television, has become the dream machine. We need to take that back; each of us is a Dream Machine
Do these set top boxes have microphones now??? If so, I'm opening mine up and cutting the connection to it. Theres no way I'm allowing the possibility of anyone listening in to my home. You know eventually this will certainly be abused.
"We LOVE being data-mined! Please, do it more!"
- signed, every Facebook user everywhere
It would be easy for them to see what ads you surfed away from. That information could be saleable and most people would not mind it too much. OTOH, people would mind if they reported on what you were watching when the commercial came up.
Arguments? Pillow talk? Imagine it overhears you discussing whether it is time to overthrow the government (one of the duties of American citizens is to overthrow the government when necessary -- see, for example, The Declaration of Independence). Now suppose it shows you ads for Buds Gun Shop and three books; The Anarchist Cookbook, The Amateur's Guide to Forming a Militia, and So You Want to Overthrow The Government.
Now, since Verizon is a good citizen that wants to play ball with the government, they provide access to their private corporate information about what ads they have been serving to which households.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
You have a girlfriend over and little does she know you have cause sex based ads to happen... Or to test how far the information collected goes - role play and act out a murder scene...And then wait for the police to show up ....I've fallen and cant get up...
I don't use Verizon for my television but in my parents case, they don't have a cell phone from Verizon so there can't be any listening in on conversations.
As to the set top box, the article mentions infrared sensors. Electrical tape works wonders. If Verizon complains about "hacking" their hardware, put the set top box in a closed tv stand. It's your property, not theirs, so they can't complain.
As to a mic in the set top box, same thing. Inside a a closed tv stand what little sound they can pick up will be muffled and not worth their effort to figure out.
If they still have a problem, cancel your service. Problem solved.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
Well, I was planning on selling my T.V. anyway.
Which one is the 'anykey'?
And as soon as CNN gets a hold of this, purchases drop to zero. People do not want to be spied on. If there are 99 TVs that all got together and decided to spy on people and there's 1 Chinese knock off, off-brand that doesn't, everyone is going to buy that one instead. This will fail horribly.
Some people see "1984" as a guidebook, not as a warning.
But actually, this is just a company, who is trying to maximize profits (breaking laws generates a cash cost, which is taken into account in the optimization study). The spying is scary, but the results are just some ads, which in a worst case are very embarrassing.
Next week's article, which reports that multiple governments are interested in this same technology, will be more worrying.
In the meantime, you can do something useful by submitting prior art.
It's "off putting" to me, so I won't buy one. But look at how people fall all over themselves to use email services that data-mine keywords from their emails for advertising purposes. Look at how people let Facebook snoop their visits not only to facebook, but to a million other sites around the web.
As far as i can tell, people LOVE having parts of their private conversations captured, data-mined for ad keywords, and used to display advertising to them. I see no reason to believe they won't love this too, although I am bewildered at why anyone would. But just watch.... I am always - always, surprised by how little people care about privacy. It seems just the opposite, they actually prefer not having any.
They don't see the downside in their daily lives, so they don't notice it. It takes thinking a few moves ahead to see what constant data capture and mining can be used for. It takes critical thinking and some imagination. But if you sign up for GMail, how is your life different the next day? Other than your new email address, it isn't. We all live in our own little worlds and most of us never question it. Most think the world is just as it seems day-to-day, and don't consider what is happening outside of their immediate field of vision.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
So when I fill the microphone device on my set top box with glue, will I get ads for a better cable provider?
I think, decades from now, we'll look back on the very concept of "targeted advertising" with mockery, like "Duck and Cover" drills in the 50s. Not because it's evil or privacy-invading, but because it doesn't work. (At least, in my estimation).
Seriously. You can *maybe* target your advertising to people working in a general profession, or in a geographical region, or maybe an age group. But every time I've seen ads targeting me because of something more specific, it's been a terrible failure.
The ads on Angry Birds were, at one point, *convinced* I was a gay black man with HIV. They were bombarding me with ads for "gay thug dating" or "HIV testing", despite the fact that the only thing they actually got right was "male" (and it's easy to get that one right when it's 50/50 on a blind guess).
Google keeps hitting me with sports ads. Football, I think, but I care so little about sports in general that I can't really tell. Which tells you how inclined I am to click those links. Or if I buy something, I start getting a lot of ads for competing products, *after* the fact.
Steam targets poorly with their "recommended games" bit. Usually, it's either stuff already on my wishlist (so I've already decided to buy it next time it's on sale), stuff that's blindingly obvious (oh, you just added Call of Duty 7 to your cart? Might I suggest Call of Duty 6, Call of Duty 8 or Call of Duty 5?), or stuff that I don't like (Train Simulator 2012). And they've got nearly as much data on me as Google. I will give them credit for using some of that data properly - they use their knowledge of what games I own to not try to sell me games I already own, or to try to upsell me on DLC for games I have.
Those are just three examples. But I could list hundreds more. I have yet to see an advertiser try to target me, and "hit" the target. They're amassing all this data on me, but they're no better at advertising to me than when they just classified me as "late teen/early twenties caucasian male working in some sort of computer field".
We need to collectively get over our obsession with targeted this or personalized that. It might give impressive results when it works, but I'd bet money that the hit rate is under 1% for the most precise groupings.
(While we're at it, I'll note that even if your targeting *was* perfect, it's useless if your actual ads are shit. And guess what? Most ads are shit)
Courtesy of IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0181689/quotes
[after having his eyes replaced to fool retinal scanners]
GAP Sign: Hello Mr. Yakamoto and welcome back to the GAP!
John Anderton: *Mr. Yakamoto?*
This is a new low for Verizon. I sure won't sign up for FIOS TV now. WAY TO GO VERIZON, you just lost one TV customer..
I wonder how would this react to loud conversations between my roommates, one of whom is generally a "douchbag," and told this, loudly and frequently by everyone.
that if Verizon did that and I had the service, I would just build a sound dampening housing around their box, and only allow vents to let heat out and allow my remote to hit the IR panel..
Doesn't surprise me that they do it, just that they have the nerve to patent it. More to sling at the next in the long line of FIOS sales people to dirty up my front porch.
What a great advancement! Now, instead of saying:
"Siri, where can I bury a dead body?" and waiting for a map, I can just say:
"Where can I bury a dead body" and watch an ad for the Sopranos.
Who knows, they might be patenting this so that they can prevent people from ever actually using this kind of Orwellian surveillance!
(And also - flying pigs, unicorns and snowball fights in hell).
Imagine arguing with your significant other and then seeing marriage counseling ads on the TV
Unless Smith and Wesson buys those ad words first. Or a local divorce attorney.
Have gnu, will travel.
and as a single female living in an urban area, she gets lots of ads for lesbian dating services
Get a cheap MP3 player, record yourself saying "I love ads with sexy redheads in bikinis", set it to repeat and glue the speaker to the device's microphone.
Wouldn't this violate many already existing laws such as eavesdropping telephone conversations, recording someone without their permission, etc?
This sort of shit is only going to drive up pirating of copyrighted TV shows.
It's bad enough providers like Comcast push so much content thru their copper lines that HDTV looks like crap with any movement, but to spy on their users? Have content providers no shame? Worse, isn't Verizon just a mobile phone/ISP? Does it provide TV to homes now also?
Wow, just wow. You'd think there would be laws against this sort of thing, it's one thing having a mic on your computer, but to put that on a cablebox just for the purpose for eavesdropping on what is going on. Completely against privacy.
Be seeing you...
Most new laptops already have a camera and microphone built into them. For those running windows, there is nothing preventing Microsoft from putting a government surveillance backdoor in the next security update.
have a liberal bias.
Yes, both parties have problems. But in general Democrats are much more fact-and reality based (admittedly with a large dose of pragmatism and tactics), thus it is not surprising that organizations that are supposed to be after facts and a description of reality would sound similar in many ways. Note that Fox News argued that they should not be judged or held accountable on how factual their reporting is.
Shrub? Sarah Palin? McInsane? Dog-torturer and all around evil-out, of touch rich asshole Romney?
Sorry, I used to vote for Republicans quite a lot. But NEVER again. The people they put up for the most important political office in the Universe are bat-shit insane, corrupt, and frankly stupid. The R party needs to implode, maybe we will get a proportional system as a result, otherwise we are in for one party rule.
Verizon does not need to have microphones in its set-top boxes to do this. They're a telephone company. If they are your local provider, they they already have access to your telephone calls: the numbers you call and what time of day and which days of the month you make those calls. If they're providing you with TV access, then your phone system has been changed from copper wire analog phone to digital, and then they've got an even easier way to parse the text in your phone calls and keep track of the vocabulary used during the phone calls.
.
Once they've got the gist of what you've been communicating about and with whom (and when) you've been communicating, then they can plug in commercials during the fiber feed of your TV shows based on that, or they could even be like google and other dicey internet providers and actually intercept the HTML of pages as the response of http-GET requests and insert HTML snippets as advertisements onto the pages you receive.
.
If you have google voice, google already listens to your phone calls for you, and it knows who is calling you and whom you are calling. If you've got a google phone / android phone, they've also got a time-stamped tracking of when and where you go places. (If you don't believe or know about that, check out their new location based game, Ingres which uses the ideas of scoring points by visiting geolocated portals which it decides for you and having you staying there for fixed amounts of time to help populate and validate google's geographic database (and possibly also to volunteer crowdsource how you walk places: footpath data, walking accessibility data).
.
Do you really think google does not use all of this vast trove of data which it has about you to help target ads specifically to you and to your interests? Targeting ads by builidng these large databases about you and your interests and your activities is exactly what google does. And ATT or verizon, or any home phone provider, has the ability to abuse your home telephone calls. And ATT or verizon, or any cell phone provider, has the ability to do that and keep track of where you are during the day when you take your cell phone along with you. Wouldn't knowing when you go to which supermarket (even if you don't use the supermarkets frequent shopper id card) by tracking your cellphone going there tell the phone provider a lot about you? (Do you go to Vons or Ralphs, or maybe you have more money and go to Trader Joes or Whole Foods). They would be able to tell when you go to a gas station or when your cell phone goes to a car dealership or how long your phone stays there (are you repairing your car at a mercedes dealer, or going frequently to do-it-yourself autoparts stores?)? Which banks do you frequent? Do you go to movie theaters or bars or nightclubs? Or you frequently in shady parts of town? Are you a college dweller or do you go to high school? Imagine how much info your geolocation info tells your cell phone provider about you!
I'm going to be sure to find the microphone and break it on any TV that has this crap in the future. Even if it means I can't facetime on my TV to my neighbor across the street. Yeah.
Microphone: Find the hole in the enclosure, poke it hard with something sharp, destroy microphone.
Camera(s): Cover with electrical tape.
Privacy protected, problem solved!
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
By now, they should have realized that stalking me with ads is commercially counter-productive, but despite all my efforts they still continue.
Anyone consider that this will be used to charge for VOD / PPV by the number of viewers?
Reminds of articles I read (though I can't find sources now) where video rental companies wanted to charge renters by number of viewers and have video tapes that could only be rewound at the store, so customers could be charged for additional viewings. Of course, both ideas are/were completely unworkable for video rentals.
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
Go Brian. Go Don. When you control the spice, you control the universe.
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
In the not to distant future paper and pencil will be labeled tools of terrorist, because it cant be monitored.
How long do we really have left?
Orwell was an optimist
Detecting she is faking it and showing ads for vibrators.
Yes, the digital set-top boxes can 'phone home'. Most of them don't unless you participate in Nielsen surveys or some such, but the capability is there. I I fully expect it to be enabled wholesale within a few years, unless you opt-out at the excruciatingly long web page listed on Page 15 of the next 'Privacy Statement' that no one ever reads.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Reminded of the following from: http://familyguy.wikia.com/wiki/Herbert
"In the last scene of the episode, he turns on the TV to an announcement of the Little League World Series. He perks up and responds: "Jackpot!""
Can you imagine if something were advertised to a pedophile which encouraged him or her to act on his or her impulses?
Somebody at Verizon needs to have their brain removed with a melon baller on public television at prime time for all to watch and learn. Patent an end to civilization, end up a fruit salad. Nuff said.
It's a zombie apocalypse in the making
1. Use the tube to get people into a hollow eye mouth relaxed opened state.
2. Tell em You want this on sale
3. ???
4. Profit
And how long will it be before the jackboots from Homeland Security will demand that all living room conversations be recorded and archived for two years.
Perhaps if you complain enough to your set-top box about the ads it'll turn them off for you :P
When shit hits the fan get some of these https://youtu.be/pY-GncsZ-UE
I think the real answer here is to rewire the microphone to a 24/7 feed from http://www.badgerbadgerbadger.com. Ads for rodent control, anti-fungals, and plumbing I can handle.
would we buy/lease this crap and put it in our house?
Someone could probably make their TV vibrate quietly all the time overwhelming the listening devices in the TV.
I never understood how ads targeting work. Every time I need something I have to do a little research on the topic and I buy only when I feel confident I made the right choice. It is easy with groceries for example and more complex with electronics, but I apply the same algorithm for all. I never understood how people can get hypnotized by ads and click "buy" after they saw one.
Discalaimer: I do enjoy some ads, the funny ones, and from time to time I watch them just because they are funny. But I've got enough data points over the years to honestly claim that there is no correlation between this and my consumer behaviour.
Hmm, now that I think about it I believe I might be a robot.