Facebook Patent Imagines Triggering Your Phone's Mic When a Hidden Signal Plays on TV (gizmodo.com)

Based on a recently published patent application, Facebook could one day use ads on television to further violate a user's privacy. From a report: The patent is titled "broadcast content view analysis based on ambient audio recording." It describes a system in which an "ambient audio fingerprint or signature" that's inaudible to the human ear could be embedded in broadcast content like a TV ad. When a hypothetical user is watching this ad, the audio fingerprint could trigger their smartphone or another device to turn on its microphone, begin recording audio and transmit data about it to Facebook.

Comments

Re:There's only two reasons you'd patent this:

[MrKaos]

The average person has a threshold that they have to be pushed beyond before they'll actually take anything

This process has a taxonomy that comes under anal fist fucking, right now they're really enjoying it but they're looking at the fire extinguisher with some mixture of fear and anticipation.

Re:There's only two reasons you'd patent this:

[MrKaos]

Love your imagery. What's after the fire extinguisher?

Setting off the fire extinguisher