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Ad Networks Using Inaudible Sound To Link Phones, Tablets and Other Devices (arstechnica.com)
ourlovecanlastforeve writes with a link to Ars Technica's report of a new way for ads to narrow in on their target: high-pitched sounds that can make ad tracking cross devices and contexts. From the article: 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.
They pull crap like this and then have the gall to say adblock users are evil?
And cuz iPhone. It works on both.
So your mic has a -3db point at 16k? OK, so all that means is your signal is attenuated.
Solution: BPF and amplify. Nothing of interest in that range, so collateral (spectral) damage is unimportant. Add a dash of modern DSP and blizzow!
Please retake Signals & Systems and then try again, thanks.
Fifty years ago you would have been quite right but unfortunately the tech has been getting better. (Did I just write that?) Nowadays, speakers can easily reproduce sounds that are inaudible to the majority of the population and microphones can pick them up. Not with the fidelity of audible sound, but they aren't interested in recording hifi audio anyway. To make matters worse, we've gotten a lot better at performing mathematical tricks in software to make signals more robust against distortion. You say it cannot be done, but companies are in fact already doing this and these things are already out there, I'm sorry to say.
If an app wants microphone access in ios, it has to explicitly request it. You get a popup and have to ok it. If you don't, it doesn't have access. It can refuse to work, if it wants, but fuck them.
Does that happen in Android? I feel it does not, and you probably can, in the latest version, explicitly disable mic access or something? An android user can correct me.
I will say that questions like this:
http://stackoverflow.com/quest...
SO question:
"
1- I want to record.
2- User disallowed.
3- I want to record again.
4- I call requestRecordPermission:
5- It simply returns granted=NO (without prompting for permission)
Can I prompt the permission Alert to user somehow?
"
Make me VERY happy to see answers like: "There's no way to do this"
"I want to spam the user with access requests that are full screen OS level stuff until he says ok. How can I do this?" -> "Nnnnnnope!"
Anyway, if Android doesn't do this, that's sad, and hopefully they will soon. If Android and Ios both do this, I don't see how most programs will be able to get mic access at all in the first place.
If you RTFA, you'll note that no one actually says this is happening yet.
This is about a complaint filed with the FCC to prevent the use of this technology. One company, SilverPush, is cited as having developed the technology and details about it are in the public view, but that's the only case where there's even anything to cite about this form of intrusive technology.
You can let your hackles go back to their normal position now.
No it doesn't. Going high in frequencies is simple. REALLY simple, and can be done even with the cheapest off the shelf small speakers.
Covering a wider range of octaves towards the low end is the difficult part.
Or you could run a spectrum analyzer and not have to feed and care for it for 10-15 years.
Amazon's app store doesn't run as a system application and can't do much of anything without explicit user permission. Google's app store is tied in with Google Play Services and runs as a system application that can do whatever it wants on your phone whenever it wants.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.