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Over 200 Android Apps Are Currently Using Ultrasonic Beacons To Track Users (bleepingcomputer.com)
Catalin Cimpanu, writing for BleepingComputer: A team of researchers from the Brunswick Technical University in Germany has discovered an alarming number of Android apps (234, to be exact) that employ ultrasonic tracking beacons to track users and their nearby environment. Their research paper focused on the technology of ultrasound cross-device tracking (uXDT) that became very popular in the last three years. uXDT is the practice of advertisers hiding ultrasounds in their ads. When the ad plays on a TV or radio, or some ad code runs on a mobile or computer, it emits ultrasounds that are picked up by the microphone of nearby laptops, desktops, tablets or smartphones. SDKs embedded in apps installed on those devices relay the beacon back to the online advertiser, who then knows that the user of TV "x" is also the owner of smartphone "Y" and links their two previous advertising profiles together, creating a broader picture of the user's interests, device portfolio, home, and even family members.
I already have a firewall and Hosts file on my phone to inhibit stuff talking to the world that I don't choose, but certain things I want to have 'net data access...
Obviously Android permissions are only so fine-grained and more and more users (particularly of younger generations) accept any of them.
A piece of tape over a webcam is one thing, but to disable a mic, not so easy to open things up nowadays to cut a wire!
But is there a list of these know apps?
Completely useless, alarmist, unactionable article. Name names, dammit.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
>When the ad plays on a TV or radio, or some ad code runs on a mobile or computer, it emits ultrasounds that are picked up by the microphone of nearby laptops, desktops, tablets or smartphones. SDKs embedded in apps installed on those devices relay the beacon back to the online advertiser, who then knows that the user of TV "x" is also the owner of smartphone "Y"
Imagine you're on your phone and browsing the web. You load one of those ads, and your phone now broadcasts your advertiser-assigned unique ID via ultrasound. OK. Who says it has to be another device YOU own that picks it up?
How difficult would it be to drop listening devices in high traffic areas that listen for those tones, sending location information back to whoever? And that's just to augment other devices that might be infected with a listen-and-report app.
This isn't an advertising tool, it's a ubiquitous surveillance tool for three-letter-agencies that advertisers have discovered. That is, of course, assuming it actually works outside a lab and isn't just an untested fantasy the ad types latched onto.
Anyway, IF phones can both transmit and detect ultrasonic tones (which I question), it's only a matter of time until someone produces a 'secure' phone that has physical filters in line with the speaker and mic wires to filter out anything outside the range of human hearing.
Or pets suddenly attacking their masters when they turn their TV on, when they use their phone, etc.
#DeleteFacebook
Wanted: an app that broadcasts ALL these signals, making them think you've got every product already, so they won't waste their time trying to sell you anything. Or just pollute their data to the point it's useless.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Cited research paper:
http://christian.wressnegger.i...
Found via the reddit thread on the same topic, It names a few of the apps, primarily using the SilverPush library.
Why aren't you encrypting your e-mail?
Who cares? And you've eliminated the Chinese, Russians, Israelis, and basically every competent intelligence agency in the world in your quest for assigning partisan blame domestically.
If they are actually using ultrasonic audio frequencies it won't work with analog FM stereo transmissions. The stereo pilot is 19 KHz so the audio output of the receiver cuts off above 18 KHz. On AM radio transmissions the audio bandwidth is restricted to around 5 KHz. For digital transmissions (TV, HD FM, etc) I suspect the audio is also bandwidth limited.
FTFA noted by mystik above, they are use modulated 18-20K tones. It appears that the phone mics, software and transmission lines can handle these frequencies well enough to encode a small amount of information.
A pulse beacon, if you will.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Yep, it occurred to a number of people. That's why they're using 18K or so as the frequency. Remember, there isn't a hard wall cutoff here, just a drop in response. If all you're trying to do is send a couple of bytes of information, you can be slow and sloppy.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
According to the article, offending apps seem to be mostly from India and the Philippines. They list 5 "representative apps" with developers:
Application Name Developer Version Downloads
100000+ SMS Messages Moziberg 2.4 1,000,000 – 5,000,000
McDo Philippines Golden Arches Dev. Corp. 1.4.27 100,000 – 500,000
Krispy Kreme Philippines Mobext 1.9 100,000 – 500,000
Pinoy Henyo Jayson Tamayo 4.0 1,000,000 – 5,000,000
Civil Service Reviewer Free Jayson Tamayo 1.1 50,000 – 100,000
TABLE 2: Third-party applications with SilverPush functionality
I'm pretty sure Pandora does this on iPhone also. Last week I was on an artists site and listening to pandora on my phone. All of a sudden a song by that artist was played on a channel that was completely unrelated to that type of music. Kind of odd I thought, as I've had this happen before simply by talking to a friend about a song, and the very next song is the one we had talked about. Or maybe I'm just crazy.
Simply because the cutoff frequency is at 18Khz doesn't mean that a transducer completely stops working at that frequency. The cutoff frequency is the frequency where the response drops 3db below the more-or-less flat lower frequency response, depending on both the mechanics of the transducer and on any added electronic filtering. There will be detectable response far beyond the 15- or 18-khz cutoff frequency, both on the output and input sides of a transducer. And it's not as though the perfect fidelity is required for the purposes under discussion here.
The app permission system makes this a minor issue on Android 6+, just deny any app mic permission if it doesn't have a legitimate need to access the mic. I do wish Android app permissions were more granular at the UI layer like they are in the API (and like they were on Blackberries) but I realize that if you swamp the average user with too much information they'll just run away and not use the features, perhaps give granular control if you've enabled developer mode?
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If you recently upgraded your TV, that could be why. Seems that dogs couldn't really perceive motion on older TVs because the framerate and resolution were too low. Modern TV's with higher refresh rates and resolution makes it much easier for dogs to perceive it as real, and so they're paying more attention to TV on the whole. There's even a new TV channel FOR dogs.
http://www.foxnews.com/science...
Switch to Ubuntu: every time you logout, your sound system will switch back to default settings that won't work, and you will only remember to reconfigure it when you actually want to hear something, and then you can spend 20 mins getting it working again, by which time the bug infested chirpy-chirpy-cheep-cheep app will probably have crashed anyway..
Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
Seems that dogs couldn't really perceive motion on older TVs because the framerate and resolution were too low.
Carnivore (predator) pets like dogs and cats tend to be much more sensitive to motion.
They will *perceive* motion on TV, it will just look more choppy and flickering to them.
Just like human where able to perceive motion in silent film era's 12-16fps, in half-rate/dupe-frame 12-15fps animation, or in "shitty low"-fps GIFs.
It looks a lot more choppy, than a 24/30fps or even a 48/60fps.
Or just like human *can* see the flicker of a 60Hz CRT monitor when looked at the periphery of the view (i.e.: where there are more rods - sensors with faster response that are also responsible for the pets better motion sensitivity).
I had my cats recognize and react to things on my old 50Hz CRT, even if *I* could notice the flickering.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Tiny speakers are easier to drive at high frequencies because there's so little mass to drive. Also, your assessment is just plain wrong.
The iPhone 3GS and 4, for example, are just as capable of pushing out a 20kHz signal as a 10kHz signal. The iPhone 4 speaker actually is more effective at 20 kHz than at 10kHz.
This story is accurate. Your fact-free analysis of what smartphone speakers can and cannot do is bullshit.