Slashdot Mirror
Shazam Keeps Your Mac's Microphone Always On, Even When You Turn It Off (vice.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: What's that song? On your cellphone, the popular app Shazam is able to answer that question by listening for just a few seconds, as if it were magic. On Apple's computers, Shazam never turns the microphone off, even if you tell it to. When a user of Shazam's Mac app turns the app "OFF," the app actually keeps the microphone on in the background. For the security researcher who discovered that the mic is always on, it's a bug that users should know about. For Shazam, it's just a feature that makes the app work better. Patrick Wardle, a former NSA hacker who now develops free Mac security tools, discovered this issue thanks to his latest software OverSight, which is designed to alert users when apps use their webcam and microphone. After he released OverSight, Wardle received an email from a user who noticed that the security app alerted him that Shazam was still listening even after he had switched the toggle to "off." Curious about this discovery, and worried his own software might be issuing a false alarm, Wardle reverse engineered the Shazam app to figure out what was happening. After a few hours analyzing the code, Wardle found out that, in fact, Shazam never stops listening, as he explained in a blog post published on Monday. James Pearson, VP of global communications for Shazam, said in a statement to Motherboard: "There is no privacy issue since the audio is not processed unless the user actively turns the app 'ON.' If the mic wasn't left on, it would take the app longer to both initialize the mic and then start buffering audio, and this is more likely to result in a poor user experience where users 'miss out' on a song they were trying to identify."
For the security researcher who discovered that the mic is always on, it's a bug that users should know about.
I see what you did there.
It does sound like a legitimate reason rather than something nefarious. When someone uses a program like Shazam, they probably want it to start analyzing the song as soon as possible in case they only catch it at the end. If the initialization process takes too long, there might not be enough song information available before the track finishes. I've had the same issue with a slower phone which took to long to load Shazam before the song ran out. For this reason, keeping the mic buffer available is probably a good idea AS LONG AS it's not keeping an exclusive lock that prevents other apps from requiring the mic.
Google has its own 'what's this song' feature, but for a while I sued sound hound. Initially it was the only one, and it had better features like lyrics search. Then I found that unless I force closed the app (app switching or closing did not work), the mic was unavailable for ok google searches. Forcing the app closed released the mic. Bug or intentional, I don't know. The last time I used the app was a year or more so it could have changed, but this behavior no longer surprises me.
Silence is a state of mime.
The reason is understandable, but there should an opt-in or some kind of disclosure. Something like "This app keeps your microphone initialized for a better user experience. This "feature" can be disabled in the programs settings."
it's a bug that users should know about.
That's what it is. A bug. But not a coding error.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
If the mic wasn't left on, it would take the app longer to both initialize the mic and then start buffering audio, and this is more likely to result in a poor user experience where users 'miss out' on a song they were trying to identify."
Well of course the company owning the app would like everything to be fast for their one particular purpose, devil may care what other malicious or incompetent shit it does, or who other than their target users might object to it.
Malware / spam trying to sell you could similarly argue that they're making the user experience great for their customers to buy their Viagra / porn, who cares whether the side effect is your computer being hijacked or flooded with spam.
I was the Sun sysadmin for maybe 17 workstations in a Windows shop. Sun came out with workstations that had a mic. I told my boss I needed to open every box up and cut a wire. He didn't believe me. Told him to call his secretary and talk to her for a minute or two. When he hung up I went into his office and replayed the audio I'd recorded off his workstation.
// why do you ask?
/// did you think I was just bored one day, or something?
Spent maybe an hour cutting a wire in every workstation we'd bought. Ahhh, the days of usenet, otherwise I'd have never thought of it.
/ why yes, the camera on my laptop has tape over it
Disclosure is no substitute for software freedom. It's so easy to disclose something, give the user a bogus UI for "controlling" the program, and then do whatever the proprietor really wants done (which could include covertly recording audio from unsuspecting users who believe they control their computer's mic). There's no substitute for being free to run, share, inspect, and modify the program at any time for any reason. Software freedom is the only thing that will keep proprietors from taking advantage of computer users because when the proprietors don't know who is inspecting the code, improving the code, or distributing improved versions they know they can be caught.
Digital Citizen
It's just a shame they don't pay the phone users a cut of the take.
Have gnu, will travel.
If the requirement to be listening permanently is reasonable, then surely their users would understand and accept this as part of using their application?
Some songs don't have lyrics. Can you tell me the music they're using in the Lexus commercials that came out last week? I *think* the artist is Justice (Cadillac used them a few years ago) but I don't know. I'm not about to install Shazam to find out, either, but it can't be looked up by the lyrics.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
and we know how lame the new OSX are
It wouldn't surprise me if they just decided that since people are willingly putting permanent audio listeners in their house, nobody would care if they kept the computer mic on too.
I'm a conspiracist, but I'm also something a fatalist and in many cases I kind of shrug my shoulders at the latest privacy dustup. But I really can't grasp why someone would buy an audio device capable of listening in their house all the time and sending it back to who knows where.
Bye Bye Shazam.....deleting NOW.....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Every device with a microphone should have a physical, hardwired switch with an indicator that tells when it's enabled or disabled.
Loading...
Some months ago, the fan of my laptop died and to fix it, I had to disconnect many things and I forgot to reconnect the sound card. When I realized my error, it was too late and I was too lazy to open the case again, so I left it that way and now I connect my bluetooth speaker/headset instead of using the built-in audio. Call it a workaround if you are paranoid enough.
Open Source Network Inventory for the masses! Kuwaiba
Cameras are easy: A bit of quality black electrical tape, easily removed later, and they are blind. Microphones are far more difficult. You basically have to blind them with excessive noise or disconnect them. Since the internal microphones of laptops are never very good, I will start doing that for mine, no loss. And the microphone on my main computer is only plugged in when I use it.
Smartphones, on the other hand, are a problem here. I still have one with a removable battery (only way to be really sure it is off), and I will keep it that way as long as possible.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
This news doesn't surprise me at all. On Android, I uninstalled Shazam soon after installing it, because it wanted way too many permissions on my phone, most of which made no sense. Why on earth, for example, did it want access to my address book? NO!
It reminds me of RealAudio, which was once king of computer audio, but then became such an advertising nuisance that it became unbearable.
Besides, any Android device has music identification built in. Just say "OK Google...What song is this?" It responds by listening for a few seconds, then shows you the song, artist, and album info.
Your {device} loads a data stream that when decoded and sent through whatever audio hardware/software combination, thence to the speaker/s, makes noise - spoken word, music, whatever.
Then the device's microphone "listens" to this audio, re-converts it to a digital stream that then gets sent off to a company who presumably run it past a big database of recorded music, to match it up, and report back to you that the audio is named "Purple Rain" recorded by the artist formerly blah blah blah.
Doesn't anyone look at tags anymore? You know, the metadata? Or didn't anyone think to um, bypass the whole conversion to actual sound waves and back to digital stream.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
... the security implications?
What if they'd actually turned off the microphone instead of fooling the end-user into thinking it was off. And, then, if user's complained about missing the first 0.25s (or whatever) of the tune, Shazam responded to the users that there was a slight delay but that it was necessary to protect them from potentially being eavesdropped on? How many users would have found that reasonable and been fine with that? Well, we'll never know because Shazam didn't, apparently, care too much about the end user's privacy. But making sure they could identify an effin' song? Well, that's of paramount importance!
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
Can you tell me the music they're using in the Lexus commercials that came out last week?
I'm sure google can.
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
It takes how long to start the mic working? a few 10ths of a second maybe. yeah, that would be HORRIBLE to miss that audio. end of the world bad.
Sleep your way to a whiter smile...date a dentist!
Said a million users as they deleted the app from their phones and computers.
Please do that. A lot of users uninstalling Shazam in the days following this news coming out WILL actually send them a message - it's far more direct and measurable. Rest assured, they'll know you uninstalled it, they'll have made sure of that!