This Company Says It Uses Your Phone's Mic to Serve Ads for Facebook, Google, and More
There are plenty of ways to improve your privacy in the online world, but, one way or another, corporations both big and small find ways to mine user data, be it with or without the user's consent.
One such case has caught our attention, where a marketing agency has been under fire since December 2023 (paywalled/subscribers-only coverage). They were seen promoting the use of an “Active Listening” tech developed by them that's targeted at smartphones for collecting user voice data by using the on-board microphones and processing it using AI.
But, with a recent report by 404 Media (paywalled coverage), the situation turns out to be more grim than what was thought previously.
What's Happening: In a pitch deck that has surfaced since the initial story broke out, Cox Media Group (CMG), a digital marketing outfit based out of Atlanta, Georgia, was spotted touting “the power of voice” in a pitch. In it, they outlined how they can use AI to collect and analyze voice data from users through more than 470 sources.
All of which can then be used by advertisers to target “in-market consumers” (users) when combining the voice data with behavioral data to identify an audience who is “ready-to-buy” in a targeted 10-mile radius (can go up to 20-mile).
