Many people have long suspected smartphones and smart speakers of listening to their private conversations for various reasons, including advertising purposes, and this may finally be a reality.
Have you ever had a conversation with someone about an article only to see ads pop up on your smartphone referring to exactly what you talked about? This is probably not just a coincidence, if we are to believe the confessions published by a company specializing in advertisements: Cox Media Group.
The company briefly boasted about its ability to sell this type of data to other companies on its website, but its blog announcing this feature quickly mysteriously disappeared.
Also read – Android: how to stop your smartphone from listening to you
Your conversations would be listened to to offer you personalized advertisements
“ With active listening, CMG can now use voice data to target your advertising to the EXACT people you’re looking for », We could read on the company website. CMG has now changed the “Active Listening” page of its website, but an archived version is still available online, and the strategy is mentioned there.
The company encourages users to “imagine” the potential benefits to their businesses by targeting customers based on specific phrases taken from their daily conversations, citing examples such as “ The air conditioner is about to fail! », to offer you advertisements for air conditioners.
The company appears to be supporting a conspiracy theory and privacy issue, suggesting that the microphone on your phone, whether it’s an iPhone or an Android, records all conversations and sells the data to advertisers. CMG Local Solutions offers few details on the methodology, and its claims raise significant doubts.
Since these discoveries, Cox Media Group has explained itself by stating that its “ advertising tools include “products from third-party vendors powered by datasets from users of various social media and other applications, then packaged and resold to data providers “.
The company specifies that “ Voice-based advertising data and other data are collected by these platforms and devices under the terms and conditions provided by these applications and accepted by their users, and may then be sold to third-party companies and converted into anonymous information for them. advertisers. This anonymous data is then resold by many advertising companies “. The company would therefore not actively listen to your conversations, but rather access to a set of aggregated, anonymous and fully encrypted data originating from third parties and which may be used for ad placement.
Obviously, several journalists have already proven that your smartphone does not listen to you to offer you targeted advertisements, and it is very likely that this is rather a communication error from the advertising company.