FB partner admits phone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads | Hacker News Reader

FB partner admits phone microphones listen to people talk to serve better ads

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58 pointsummonk33 comments

On iOS you get an orange dot on the menu bar whenever the microphone is being used. I highly doubt Apple would hide that orange dot to cover for Meta/Alphabet.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Same with Android nowadays too. I don't understand how this can happen without the OS's knowledge, unless it's a major security exception made by apple+google on purpose (which I doubt as you do), or a major zero day vulnerability they are exploiting, of which there would probably be evidence of this.

Yes, it is strange, reverse engineers/debuggers could detect this for years and publish it on conferences such as Black Hat, CCC, etc.

This feels like the kind of article that will confuse folks into more confirmation bias. The claim doesn't even seem to be that Meta/Alphabet are the ones doing it, but a totally separate advertising company who would have no control over the apps from those companies.

I hate how so many people think this is how this stuff works when the actual methods are almost scarier because they don't rely on something as clear as our conversations.

I think it is cox or comcast and they use TVs to listen in and Bluetooth and WiFi to ID phones. Typically in smart TVs there is an option buried deep in settings to turn this off.

Then they use this when they connect their ad system to Meta or Google.

The iOS orange dot factor needs to be explained. Maybe Meta exploits a zero day to get access w/o orange dot? I would be extremely surprised if they were granted a hidden API by Apple that allows this. Zero upside for Apple.

Specifically for those companies, probably not.

But it could also be an obscure feature, or simply a bug that FB's famously clever and eager-to-help engineers found a way to exploit.

It wouldn't surprise me at all. Recall that Mark himself has acknowledged that he tapes over his laptops' camera holes when they're theoretically not in use.

Why? Because he knows what's up.

FWIW CMG doesn't claim that this is from smartphones, and instead ambiguously refers to smart home devices (and I would be shocked if say, Google allowed a third party to access its microphones for Google Home devices). Similarly, there is no way that the FB app is doing this (for one thing, you'd see the microphone icon on your OS) — the "FB partner" here just means FB buys some rolled-up marketing info from them, probably with zero idea where the data comes from.

If I had to guess, I'd bet this is from shady smart TV manufacturers, who have a long history of spying on their users and selling that data.

I have no evidence that CMG is doing this today. However the archived page [0] from CMG’s site describing “Active Listening” specifically mentioned smart phones. From the page:

“Active Listening begins and is analyzed via AI to detect pertinent conversations via smartphones, smart tvs and other devices.”

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230923075217/https://www.cmglo...

I'm not convinced, both android and iPhone have a feature that shows you when it's recording microphone or camera [1] [2]. Moreover, those things require app creators to request microphone and camera access.

If this happens, it's likely limited to when those indicators are lit. App creators need to get that permission from the OS and they can't override the light.

[1] https://support.google.com/android/answer/13532937?hl=en#:~:....

[2] https://www.asurion.com/connect/tech-tips/how-to-tell-what-a...

This article, nor any other article about this subject actually identifies which devices are supposedly always-on listening to you.

Not surprising at all. Many android apps are doing this, especially Chinese apps. One of the reasons I'm thinking about getting an Apple phone, or a Linux phone (which is too expensive relatively)

If an app listens on any platform they must have requested permission. Apple will be the same. Do only "Chinese apps" do this one amazing trick?

> or a Linux phone (which is too expensive relatively)

Linux phones are inexpensive, relative to other smartphones. A new PinePhone is about $150, and there are lots of older devices which can run Linux (older Pixel phones, Nexus phones, and so on) which you can get for very cheap second-hand.

> In a shocking revelation, it has come to light that one of Facebook’s alleged marketing partners...

Opening sentence comes off as sarcasm. Probably not meant to.

Would it be possible to add an (external) mic-is-in-use LED to a phone?

I belive the mic needs power to work. It wouldn't/shoudn't be powered unless it is in use. Could it also power a LED without affecting the mic performance?

Much better source: https://www.404media.co/heres-the-pitch-deck-for-active-list...

"This post is for paid members only", archive.is doesn't work there.

[dupe]

Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41404229

Says the blog pushing 2000 partners with "legitimate interest" to process data about me…

Disgust aside, what would give them the legal right to do this? Is this covered by the TOS of the Facebook android app?

If this is just plainly legal without even the fig-leaf of a TOS, why do we even have the 4th and 5th amendment at all? It's routine for intel/police agencies to purchase ad profiles of citizens, why bother with any fancy NSA super-surveillance when you can just buy an entire history of private conversations and behavioral data from CMG or any other advertiser.

This is total rubbish.

Here's the story: in December 2023 it emerged that Cox Media Group had a rogue ad sales group who had been capitalizing on the widely believed conspiracy theory that "Facebook apps listen to your phone's microphone and target ads based on it" - by pitching that in vague, confusing terms to their potential ad customers.

The moment this started getting wider coverage they deleted all mentions of it from their site, and any media organization who contacted Cox were told words to this effect:

> CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement. We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent.

That's from https://www.techdirt.com/2024/08/29/cox-caught-again-braggin... but there are plenty more like it if you search the web for "CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations".

My translation of the above: one of our ad sales teams was misleading potential customers and we told them to stop.

The only thing that's new this week is that 404media got hold of the pitch deck PDF that Cox Media Group had been using back when they were pulling this scam - you can see that document here: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25051283-cmg-pitch-d...

Read that deck and your "this is a total scam" senses should be ringing loudly.

The problem is... convincing anyone who thinks that this is happening is basically impossible.

"Facebook spied on my through my microphone and showed me ads, I know they did because I talked about a holiday in Croatia out loud and saw an advert for a hotel in Crotia few minutes later"

This doesn't account for the thousands of times they had a conversation about a holiday and did NOT see an advert for a relevant product a few minutes later. It only takes one coincidence for people to be convinced this is happening, and no amount of denials or appeal to rationality (battery life, too-many-people-in-on-the-conspiracy, phones don't let apps just listen without showing a visual indicator, etc etc etc) will convince them otherwise.

There's a great podcast episode about how hard it is to talk people out of this from 2017! https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/z3hlwr

I generally like to apply Occam’s Razor to news that seems speculative.

However the Way Back When machine archived CMG’s “Active Listening” page [0] from Sept - Nov 2023. And the wording on the website appears very clear that a) this is a technology that is actively being used and b) the data is obtained through devices like a smart phone.

Additionally, CMG’s current page [1] describing their “Targeted Display” offering has wording that sounds somewhat like Active Listening. For eg, the page mentions, “Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in.”

It’s nowhere near conclusive, but it doesn’t appear that the company is making much of an attempt to make clear that they do not listen to devices. And it’s hard for me to dismiss this as complete rubbish.

[0] - https://web.archive.org/web/20230923075217/https://www.cmglo...

[1] - https://www.cmglocalsolutions.com/solutions/targeted-display...

That's why my theory is a rogue ad sales team. They were clearly making outrageous claims about this technology. I think they were doing it to convince suckers to buy ads from them, and they stopped and scrubbed the evidence the moment people started pointing out that it was basically a big scam.

"Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in" has nothing to do with audio - it's one of the key ideas behind effective marketing in general (retargeting).

>For eg, the page mentions, “Marketing again to customers who are already familiar with you and your brand will continue to draw them in.”

That wording is also consistent with bog-standard retargeting.

This was really obvious like 10 years ago.

There's absolutely no evidence presented here

and vehemently denied by someone here in the comments every time it comes up. Let’s see what they say.

I just had a go at that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41430448

Unless you work at FB and can prove anything, with all due respect, it doesn’t matter.

Way too many people, myself included - multiple times - have experienced this. I’d hope someone who has not experienced it and does not work at the companies related to it would not be so vocal against it.

I’ll continue to be vocally against it because I’m certain it’s not happening. Humans are incredibly susceptible to pattern matching and coincidences.

Fair enough, but my point is you just can’t prove either way and only add noise to the conversation. I’d like to hear from someone at say, apple or google, if the mics could be used or have been used before there were led indicators, for instance. But I guess that’s not going to happen.

But it never quite clicked with everyone. It's nasty to do it on the sly.

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