That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You're Watching on TV (nytimes.com)

Rick Zeman writes: The New York Times (may be paywalled) has an article describing how some apps track TV and movie viewing even when the loaded app isn't currently active. These seemingly innocuous games, geared towards both adults and children work by "using a smartphone's microphone. For instance, Alphonso's software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see. The information can then be used to target ads more precisely...." While these apps, mostly available on Google play, with some available on the Apple Store, do offer an opt opt, it's not clear when consumers see "permission for microphone access for ads," it may not be clear to a user that, "Oh, this means it's going to be listening to what I do all the time to see if I'm watching 'Monday Night Football."'
One advertising executive summarizes thusly: "It's not what's legal. It is what's not creepy."

Comments

People gave control of their devices away.

[Anonymous Coward]

Early in the personal computing revolution, consumer computing devices answered to their owners, and life was good.

In the intervening decades via millions of separate choices made by billions of separate mindless consumers, people have voted en-masse to give control of their computing devices to multinational companies, and any data-broker who wants it. They voted to disempower themselves, and give that power to surveillance capitalism companies, even when there were other good choices. They drove the good choices out of the market.

That inevitably means that control will not be used for their benefit. Modern computing is a clusterfuck because too few people chose wisely, and too many chose unwisely. The unwise dictated the market, because they were numerous. The wise are swept along against their will, struggling to avoid the worst of the stupidity.

The sheep have done everything in their power to steer the flock towards the looming precipice.

Re:People gave control of their devices away.

[Rick Schumann]

Or, as I've said many times in the past: Computers used to be fun. Not so much anymore.

There's going to be a fork in the road, somewhere up ahead. We may never even really notice it. The right-hand path will take us to a place where there are strict controls and laws protecting people's privacy, giving them control over their data. The left-hand path will continue down the road we're currently on, where there are more and more data breaches, more and more surveillance in all aspects of our lives, and the people, becoming dumber and dumber, will trade what's left of their privacy and freedom for more 'conveniences', like the native Americans trading away Manhattan for a few baubles. Those of us who never fell for the 'smartphone' meme will be looked upon even more so as freaks, conspiracy theorists, and at worst, criminals trying to hide alleged illegal activities, when all it is we want is some core of our lives left private, not constantly under the microscope of public, corporate, and government scutiny.

There's still a small chance that people will wake up, suddenly seeing what's been going on, experience an epiphany about what it is they've given up, and they may demand it back. Assuming that is that it's not too late to do anything about it. We'll see I guess. Of course it'll be a race to the bottom, between overreaching surveillance and spying on everyone, War to End All Wars, and human-caused global climate change, to see which one finally destroys our civilization and our species. Not sure we can stop any one of them.

App rules

[JohnFen]

First rule: don't install any apps that you don't have a strong need to install, and particularly avoid games.

Second rule: don't install games.

Third rule: install and use a firewall to prevent any app from communicating to the internet, unless internet access is needed for the app's primary purpose and you really can't live without it.

Fourth rule: marketers are evil scum, and are getting more evil and scummier as time goes on.

Fifth rule: don't install games

Re:App rules

[Rick Schumann]

How about Rule Zero: Don't have a smartphone in the first place.

You do know that right out of the box, never even having done so much as made a normal voice phone call on it, your smartphone was already compromised, right? Likely installed right at the factory, before it was even boxed up to ship to you, or rooted by your wireless carrier before it was handed to you. Even if none of that is true, there's so many browser-based exploits out there for smartphones that you basically can't avoid it, and that's just the normal citizen-criminals I'm talking about, not the mass surveillance machine of three-letter government agencies and their specifically-written code. Before you dismiss me as a crackpot paranoid conspiracy theorist, I suggest you reseach news stories from various sources over the last 5 years. Plenty of revelations from researchers and whistle-blowers about what can and can't be done to a smartphone to turn it into a surveillance device. And, since the wireless companies lock down the core code and OS running your phone, there's literally nothing you can do to effectively secure a smartphone the way you could secure a desktop computer; you're literally not allowed to, for most all intents and purposes. Yes, I suppose if you're a developer-level software engineer and can break into your phone at the bootloader level, completely rewrite you phone's core OS with code you've personally vetted, then you can secure it any way you want. But if you can do that then you're in a minority, a tiny fraction of a percent. But that doesn't help everyone else. For most, the line from the old movie Wargames applies: The only way to win the game is to not play.

..and, no, I don't have a smartphone.