Report alleges that microphones on devices are used for "Active Listening" to deliver

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A report suggests that a major advertising company has used the microphone of devices to spy on users to deliver targeted ads. A report published by 404 Media spills the beans about the controversy.

The article is behind a paywall, but here's what it talks about.

Are your smart devices listening to you?

Cox Media Group (CMG), which is a partner of Meta (Facebook), Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, claimed that it can deliver targeted adverts based on what users were talking near device microphones. The company does this via something called Active Listening. Apparently, CMG not only openly admitted that it could use its technology to listen to what users say near smart devices, it actually advertised its capabilities on a web page. Do you get it? They were bragging about wiretapping, on their website!

A set of pitch deck slides, obtained by 404 Media, highlights the features of Active Listening. You can access an archive of it here. CMG deleted the web page where it had bragged about Active Listening, the last time this controversy arose. That does seem like an admission of guilt, but that's not enough evidence.

Speaking of which, there was a similar allegation last year, but it had been promptly denied by Google and Amazon. According to Ars Technica, Google pointed out that Android has restrictions in place to prevent apps from capturing audio when they are not used. Android displays an icon when an app accesses the microphone (iOS does this too). Amazon had stated that Echo devices were only engaged when the user speaks the wake word. It had also clarified that users could review their voice history from the Alexa app's settings, and see what kind of data was processed. What else were they going to say?

Techdirt points out that this wasn't the first time Cox tried something like this, the cable giant wanted to embed microphones and cameras in cable boxes in 2009, to monitor people. An article by The Byte linked to an archived version of a blog post from CMG outlining the capabilities of Active Listening. Gizmodo says that Amazon told them it has not worked with CMG on the program, and has no such plans. Meta also denied the allegations. Google has ended its partnership program with CMG after the report by 404 Media was published. Make of that what you will.
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