Conspiracy confirmed! Our phones are listening to everything we say
The meme has been around for a couple of years now: a woman whispers search terms into her boyfriend’s locked phone while he’s in the shower, to influence the ads that pop up in his feed. “Therapy.” “How to talk about my feelings.” “Puppy adoption.” Setting the dire implications about mens’ emotional states aside, the whole joke revolves around an unspoken suspicion that our technocapitalist overlords are listening to everything we say, all the time, and that relevant ads will soon flood the boyfriend’s feed.
This suspicion is nothing new, of course. Back in 2015, GCHQ whistleblower Edward Snowden stoked fears about smartphones being used to listen in on our conversations, with claims that intelligence services can turn them into a “hot mic” using a simple hack. Now, leaked documents from one of Amazon and Facebook’s alleged marketing partners seem to prove that we’re not just being paranoid – our phones are listening to our every utterance, no hacks necessary.
The leaked pitch deck, shared by 404 Media, comes from the US radio and TV conglomerate Cox Media Group (CMG). In the slideshow (which it deleted from its website), CMG shows off a software system it calls “Active Listening”. Apparently, this enables users to pair “real-time intent data” captured by our smart devices, as they listen into our conversations, with behavioural data using AI. The end goal? To sell us things more efficiently, obviously.
404 Media previously reported Cox Media Group (CMG) was advertising a service that claimed to target ads based on what potential customers said near device microphones. Now, here is the pitch deck CMG sent to prospective companies: https://t.co/o4XxXbZMcD
— 404 Media (@404mediaco) August 27, 2024
404 Media first revealed CMG’s Active Listening tech back in December 2023, when it also called out another marketing company for boasting about similar surveillance software in a podcast. The most alarming part of the newly-shared pitch deck, though, is a slide that touts partnerships with Facebook, Amazon, and Google.
Since the story broke, Facebooker owner Meta has announced that it’s reviewing its partnership with CMG, to check for terms of service violations. (Let’s not forget that Facebook was fined $5 billion in 2019, for deceiving users about their ability to keep their personal information private amid the Cambridge Analytica scandal.) Google, meanwhile, has removed the company from a list of partners. A spokesperson for Amazon has told 404 that it “has never worked with CMG on this program and has no plans to do so,” but that it will take action if any marketing partners are found to be violating its rules.
All this said, it’s still not entirely clear how CMG gathers voice data, whether it’s always listening, or only tunes when you’re consciously talking to a device – using Siri, or chatting on the phone, for example. “We know what you’re thinking. Is this even legal?” wrote the company in a 2023 blog post (also deleted from its website). “The short answer is: yes. It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you.” It goes on to note that permission is often hidden in the fine print of a multi-page terms of use agreement, though, and it’s no secret that no one actually reads those.
Should we accept unsolicited surveillance as a necessary side effect of our digital lives? Probably not! Are we going to stop using our phones, knowing that a Zuckerberg or Bezos drone could be taking notes on our deepest desires as we speak? Also no! And maybe you don’t even mind a tech company – or AI – casually spying on you at all hours of the day. Maybe you’ve got nothing to hide, and actually enjoy the curated ads in your feed. But targeted ads aren’t just about catering to our desires; they also help to shape them, with multiple studies linking smartphone usage and harmful shopping habits. And, with tools like CMG’s, they’re getting better at it all the time. Don’t like it? Better throw your phone into the sea.
