Siri and Cortana
Who knows what Siri and Cortana are doing in the background. Apple and MS may want exclusive rights to this kind of monitoring.
The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has fired off letters to a dozen mobile app developers, warning that their software could be in violation of federal privacy laws. The watchdog said it has spotted a number of applications on the Google Play market that contain SilverPush code, a controversial software library that …
I think you'll find Google not Apple is the king of spying on stuff like what web pages you visit, and are probably hoping to get Android built into smart TVs so it can upload information about what programs you are watching to home base to add to the huge database of personal information they've already collected on you.
Many codecs sample at 44.1 KHz or lower (especially web based ads). Given Nyquist's (or Nyquist-Shannon as it's now know) theorem (max theoretically reproducible signal is half the sample rate), how does the ultrasonic signal get reproduced?
Also, many speakers do quite poorly over 18KHz, and many microphones aren't good with high frequencies, either, so even if an ultrasonic is (barely) present, "hard of hearing" (in higher ranges) microphones might not hear them.
Seems like this ad tracking technology has some serious roadblocks in its way, just based on the current technology. Might do better with some sort of infrasound, or audible but unrecognizable as a signal sound (audible steganography) for tagging ads.
Or - even better, audible watermarking of sound sources with date/time/channel ID stamps -- instead of tagging the ads themselves, tag the medium. After the spyware phones home, the big data analytics engines can do the mass lookups to correlate date/time/channel stamps with what content was playing. This way, individual advertisers don't have to "play" to be useful. Some sort of "ignorable" (by humans) noise would carry the information.
@Hurn
Thanks for giving these bastards more ideas on how to snoop on people!
I've got an idea. Instead of doing that, why don't we tell them all to sod right the hell off?
Fortunately the newest Android system allows me to lock out permissions in each app, and I lock out everything the app doesn't need to do what *I* want it to do. Permission to use microphone for an app that doesn't clearly need it? DENY.
@Hurn
Fortunately the newest Android system allows me to lock out permissions in each app, and I lock out everything the app doesn't need to do what *I* want it to do. Permission to use microphone for an app that doesn't clearly need it? DENY.
This is EXACTLY why I purchased the WileyFox Storm recently, it'll be a long time before Android 6.xx becomes standard on handsets due to manufacturers refusing to patch or update vulnerable systems.
Cyanogen OS includes so many extra privacy features, more than even google provide in their latest version... and it's constantly updated.
18000 to 19950 Hz
https://github.com/MAVProxyUser/SilverPushUnmasked/commit/bc1dde934c0be02cfce72b7ea68d4a147ddd308d
This dumb scheme seems extremely unlikely to work. That audio range is a mess of distortion, echoes, dead zones, and frequency substitution during compression.
This dumb scheme seems extremely unlikely to work. That audio range is a mess of distortion, echoes, dead zones, and frequency substitution during compression.
I'm going old school on this, and I mean OLD school. There is no way you'll get anything over about 5..7KHz past an old fashioned tea cozy. It may look strange, but we all have to make sacrifices.
:)
"Or - even better, audible watermarking of sound sources with date/time/channel ID stamps -- instead of tagging the ads themselves,.."
Look at what Vizio is doing with their latest TVs - this very thing, only with video. So even if you're watching a DVD or some other video source Vizio has no business knowing about, they're watching the screen more closely than you, and doing a "Shazaam" type thing on the content to figure out exactly what you're watching and then helpfully phoning that home to Vizio HQ. Read the microscopic T&Cs with your new Vizio TV for the details. I'm sure it's just to "improve the customer experience", or some such. Nothing to worry about.
In case you haven't noticed, this sort of technology works just fine on pretty much every android phone. Google Chromecast uses ultrasound channel to verify whether a guest user is in the same room or not, and it works rather reliably.
See: https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6109297?hl=en.
Indeed, by virtue of the technology, there can be no "ultrasonic" frequencies produced. However there are sonic frequencies that a lot of people can't hear.
A department that I supported QCing TV found that 2 out of the 12 staff (and yes, they were the youngest) complained about some high frequency whistle. It turned out to be 18KHz produced from the new LED studio lighting they were using.
The moral of the story is that they can embed HF sound in the ads, but they'll piss off some of their audience.
Outrageous!
Meanwhile a certain technology website, not a million miles from here, has taken to embedding an ad which specifically tries to circumvent people's ad-blocking software. [It even has an #adblk id on the div].
Can anyone smell the stench of hypocrisy, in the air?
I'm tired of hearing about stuff like this and then not being able to figure out whether any of the apps I have are affected.
It might be innocent until proven guilty, but at the same time if someone's accused of rape you don't let 'em go back to their teaching job until the case is resolved.
I'm trying to work this BS out:
So if you're watching a TV show or an online video about cooking, and an ad comes on for kitchenware with an embedded ultrasonic signal, apps using SilverPush on your nearby phone will hear it, realize you're into cookery, and phone home this data to ad networks.
If I'm watching at home with my phone and my wife has Coronation Shite on the telly and there is an advert in the commercial break for BodyForm or Tena Lady, then the app will assume I'm into feminine hygiene and report this to ad networks so next time I'm reading The Register I get adverts telling me I need wings to be fully active?
Trying to sell you more of what you have just bought (Amazon I am especially looking at you, you morons but Google is just as stupid). Stalking you round the web offering more of what you just looked at but don't actualy want (Google, Amazon et al). Telling me what other people have bought (as if I care). Telling me what is "Trending" (ditto). Making special offers that aren't actually special for stuff that is otherwise unsaleable tat.
Yeah. really advanced, that.
Just a good indicator of which businesses and products to avoid like tha plague.
Telling me what other people have bought (as if I care). Telling me what is "Trending" (ditto).
You do not - sheeple do. Sheeple mentality says different - "galactic battlecruiser displacement lardearse" has it, I should have it. So for 99% of the population what other people (especially ones with a galactic battlecruiser displacement lardearse) have bought, what is trendy is the key - you do not want to be seen as grumpy square pensioner who buys his jumpers from Edinburgh Woolen Mill once in a decade.
>What's wrong with buying from Edinburgh Woollen Mill?
More to the point, what's wrong with only buying jumpers once a decade?
I bought my favourite jumper in 2001.It's now the perfect age for working in the garage, or the garden, so gets worn almost every day.
I bought a new jumper when I started my new job, in late 2015, as I felt I needed to make an impression. It should do me through to 2025 or so, I guess.
Actually the really simple solutions are:
Read newspapers and books - I challenge the software to identify what I'm reading from the sound of page turns. Secondly, just don't have your mobile glued to you - mine when not in use gets left near the (non-IoT) kettle in the kitchen.
Okay I know this doesn't stop a store broadcasting relevant sounds so that when I'm out shopping the app will know which store I'm in, so you may want to turn the phone off when visiting places that you would rather visit in 'incognitio" mode...
"Read newspapers and books - I challenge the software to identify what I'm reading from the sound of page turns."
Some hidden camera will probably read you instead.
"mine when not in use gets left near the (non-IoT) kettle in the kitchen."
One, what makes you think your kettle isn't some whispernet-capable device that you don't know about? Two, it can probably hear the sounds from that far away.
"Okay I know this doesn't stop a store broadcasting relevant sounds so that when I'm out shopping the app will know which store I'm in, so you may want to turn the phone off when visiting places that you would rather visit in 'incognitio" mode..."
Which kind of defeats the purpose of having the phone on hand. To be able to do on-the-spot research and, of course, to take a call in the event of an emergency. Plus turning off the phone (even if you could) doesn't remove the Big Brother cameras ubiquitous in stores these days.
"These apes were capable of listening in the background and collecting information about consumers without notifying them," said FTC consumer protection bureau director Jessica Rabbit.(a few letters changed here and there to protect, etc.).
Seems like another TLA or two could use some advice in that direction, rather than forcing backdoors and crippled OS's on us all...
I wonder if they would need retuning. Anyone with pets notice them run out the room when certain TV progs and ads come on?!
If I can find out which ad has this I'll record it and play it on a loop in my garden to stop the neighbours cats leaving presents on my lawn.
Or the software repellant that constantly burbles rubbish in the correct ultrasonic frequency bands, using the built in speaker silverpush is snooping all over. Remember GIGO. Presumably there is a short initiator sequence, other wise it'd be false positives everywhere; or am I displaying my ignorance?
;)
PS Thankfully my personal terrorism/subversion research machine has no microphone, I built it. People mock me when they know I still build my own use PC, the fools
"in order to make use of the SilverPush code, they must first obtain direct permission from users to both access their microphone hardware"
So there is currently isn't a technology control to prevent that if they don't? God help us all we really are just dollar signs to these type of people.
> God help us all we really are just dollar signs to these type of people.
Got some bad news, we have been for a long time. There are no scruples in marketing - at least in certain areas of marketing. Basically to many it's simply a matter of whatever they can get away with - and as long as the "cost" is less than the profits then nothing is out of consideration.
So they listen in on background adverts, something which I have no control over and haven't actually chosen through any input of my own, and decide to use that and only that information to target me for more advertising? What could possibly be the point of this? They're not choosing adverts based on anything I've done, they're choosing them based on what some other advertising people think people watching TV at this time might possibly be interested in. They could achieve exactly the same effect with far less cost and legal issues by simply looking at a clock.
Don't be too surprised if each commercial is uniquely encoded for each program so that just listening to enough of ONE commercial is enough for the app to identify the ad AND the program attached to it. Time isn't going to be as useful as the program could be recorded or time-shifted.
I'm surprised the information is sent at 18KHz - 19.5KHz.
I would have guessed a carrier a bit lower than15KHz, with the assumption that anything close to or above the traditional TV horizontal scan rate (15.625KHz or 15.734KHz) would be filtered out. A 15KHz tone might annoy a few teenagers, but it's not as if they are the target consumer.
20Hz - 20KHz is the golden standard. Many pieces of audio equipment claims to reproduce that range. But I pretty much believe that 99% of them are.. untruthful.