India-Based Zapr Has Developed Tech That Listens To Ambient Sounds Around Users To Build Targeted Ad Profiles, Several Popular Local Services Use Its Tech (factordaily.com)

Bengaluru-based Zapr Media Labs, which counts Rupert Murdoch-led media group Star and several major local companies including Flipkart (which is now owned by Walmart), music streaming service Saavn, handset maker Micromax as its investors, has developed a tech that listens to ambient sounds around users to build targeted advertising profiles of them, reports news outlet FactorDaily. Zapr does this by using the microphone on the smartphone. Several major services in the country including Chota Bheem games to Dainik Bhaskar (a news outlet) to, likely, even Hotstar (a hugely popular streaming service which launched its service in the US and Canada last year, and which as you may recall, set a global record for most simultaneous views earlier this year) have embedded Zapr's technology into their apps. FactorDaily reports that most of these services are not forthcoming to their customers about what kind of monitoring they are doing. An excerpt from the report: One of the apps that inspired Zapr's founding team was the popular music detection and identification app Shazam. But, its three co-founders saw opportunity in going further. "Instead of detecting music, can we detect all kinds of medium? Can we detect television? Can we detect movies in a theatre? Can we detect video on demand? Can we really build a profile for a user about their media consumption habits... and that really became the idea, the vision we wanted to solve for," Sandipan Mondal, CEO of Zapr Media Labs, said in an interview last week on Thursday.

Shorn of jargon, the underlying Zapr tech listens to ambient sounds around you, analyses it, and profiles users based on their media consumption habits. "That data would be very useful in order to recommend the right kind of content and also for brands and advertisers to hopefully reduce the wastage and inefficiencies and make smarter decisions," said Mondal, who co-founded the company in 2012 along with his batchmates from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (batch of 2010) Deepak Baid and Sajo Mathews.

Zapr claims to have the largest media consumption analytics database in India and helps television channels and brands to earn a better bang for their advertising buck. To be sure, advertising -- even with the internet's promise of better targeting -- still is an inaccurate business with proxies, at best, helping measure its return on investment. But, Zapr's tech comes with privacy and data concerns -- lots of it.

Comments

only me

[AndyKron]

The only control I have over this is to not have a smartphone. I wish someone who did have control over this would put a stop to it.

Re:only me

[olsmeister]

Pop open the phone and clip the wires going to the microphone. Problem solved!

Re:only me

[ShanghaiBill]

The only control I have over this is to not have a smartphone.

That is not the only control you have. You also have the ability to not download and install apps that access your microphone.

If you install an app that uses the microphone, then read the fine print so you understand why it needs that access, and what it is doing with the data.

I wish someone who did have control over this would put a stop to it.

Look in the mirror. You will see the person who has control.

Re:only me

[93 Escort Wagon]

iOS lets you control access to the microphone, on a per-app basis, at the time the app tries to access the mic. I believe recent versions of Android offer that same level of control.

It’s annoying that you have to do this, but you can “just say no”.

Re:only me

[Rick Schumann]

So get rid of your smartphone. You've been indoctrinated to believe that you cannot live without one, but that's complete and utter bullshit. I do not have a smartphone, never have, never will, and I live life just as fully as anyone else. Cheap clamshell phone for the win!

Think about it: do you really need to play games, surf the web, watch movies, or any of the other crap you do with your smartphone other than make and receive calls and text messages? No, you do not, you WANT to do those things, but you do not NEED to do those things. It'll just take an adjustment.

Furthermore: What's the price difference every month between basic cell service with text messaging, and that plus the overpriced, underserving data-plan you have now? How much money would you save every year if you didn't have a smartphone?

Then there's the phone itself. Your smartphone is a ticking timebomb, waiting to go haywire on you, and you cannot get it repaired when it does. There goes, what, at least $500? I have a $50 cheap-ass plastic clamshell phone. Works great as a phone, that's all it needs to do. It dies? I say "oh well shit" toss it in the bin and get another one. No big deal

B-b-b-but Rick, what about Facebook, Twitter, and other social media? All my friends will miss me! I'll DIE without social media!

No, you won't, you'll actually have a better life overall not being distracted by the cancer that is so-called 'social media'. Be more ACTUALLY social with ACTUAL friends, in person, instead. You'll benefit far more from the social contact than you will from shitty Facebook and garbage like it. So will your kids, especially; get riid of their smartphones, too, and save all sorts of money!

So you see you should just make the leap and get rid of your smartphone. You'll thank me later for this advice.

Re:only me

[Rick Schumann]

Bill, word has it that you don't even have to download any apps, it's either baked right into the firmware of the phone, or you get surveillance software push-installed silently, with it running silently in the background. Your phone could be listening to you right now and you'd never know it, no way to tell. Don't tell me I'm paranoid, either, it's all been documented, and don't tell me you're not worth surveilling, because that's not the point. The only way to be sure you win this game is to not play.

Re:only me

[Rick Schumann]

Unless it's a hardware switch that's literally wired between the microphone and the rest of the phone, you can't count on it doing what it says it does.

Re:only me

[Aighearach]

It is an exceptionally small sacrifice, just carry a dumb phone and some other type of computer assistant, like a wifi tablet. And only install apps that are tools. And don't grant a single excess permission.

Re:only me

[ShanghaiBill]

Bill, word has it that you don't even have to download any apps

That is not what TFA says.

Do you have evidence whatsoever that this capability is "baked right into the firmware"?

Re:only me

[Rick Schumann]

Uh, no, you clearly don't have any idea how electronics works.
The amplifer between the chipset that generates the audio and the speaker(s) is not bi-directional; it can only amplify an input signal and feed that to the speaker(s), not the other way around. Or are you being sarcastic?

Re:only me

[Rick Schumann]

No, you still don't understand, and you clearly don't understand that article either. Go learn some basic electronics then get back to me, stop trying to get your electronics 'education' from shitty articles written by people who don't understand electronics either.

Clippy: It sounds like you need a Trojan

[goombah99]

Do you need some help with that?

Not new news..

[AndrewFlagg]

this is just snooping and peeping renamed as AI and Deep Machine Learning. sure, any programming can connect the dots and see that I posted on / . and always earn a score:1 -- because it's not news, so says captain obvious. its just crazy how many sales calls I get helped out by a robo calling computer just listening to my background noise without anyone on the other end saying anything.. odd. true.

Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[rsilvergun]

hasn't pre installed them and flagged them as system apps you can't uninstall. I guess you can spend days researching, buy the phone, search through all the apps to check if they've got it.

Oh, and don't forget to check each and every app update on your phone, since apps update automatically. You'll have to disable that and check each app, but you'll want to update them since otherwise you'll get nailed by security issues.

Re:Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[Aighearach]

Apps do not update automatically. They update at the behest of the Master if the user has entered Slave Mode and checked that box. If you uncheck the box, apps update when the user updates them.

Re:Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[ShanghaiBill]

There is no evidence whatsoever that this capability is preinstalled by the vendor.

If they did that, it would be highly illegal in many jurisdictions, there would be hundreds of people involved in this illegal activity, and it would be a complete disaster for the vendor when (not if) it leaked. So how long would it take to leak? Less than 24 hours, since anyone with a voltmeter could detect the microphone turning on.

Re: Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. I've had installing or updating apps set to manual yet have caught "system apps" like play store itself updating without any user action. Other things like Google services network and one other I can't remember cause it's not even got a name on play it was some com.blah sub app attached to services

Anti stalking laws.

[Fly Swatter]

If they follow you everywhere you go and log what you are doing, shouldn't these old laws eventually start to apply? Yea I know; don't buy such a device, because these things are so easy to avoid. That fellow citizen standing next to you probably has one even if you don't, not to forget all the cameras watching you everywhere...

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Not gonna work

[mrops]

I still keep getting these p__is enlargement adverts, and I don't even own a smartphone, only my girlfriend.