Cox "Active Listening" on your phone, TV, smart speaker - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Peabody
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2023, 04:19:46 pm
content: A few days ago a page appeared on the site of Cox Media Group, which is affiliated with Cox Communications, the ISP, offering to sell to its clients information gained from listening in on our private conversations. The ad has since been taken down, but was archived by 404Media. Here's a good summary:https://gizmodo.com/cmg-local-solutions-ads-listening-on-devices-1851102426Cox has had no comment on this.Does anyone here have any insight on what's going on? Is CMG just making this up, or should I believe that my phone is listening in all the time and either Motorola or AT&T is selling that information to Cox? Well, I guess if there's a Cox app on my phone, that might also provide a way, but otherwise I'm having trouble seeing exactly how this would work.I wonder if my Cox Minibox has a microphone.

author: ejeffrey
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 19, 2023, 04:30:02 pm
content: The consensus seems to be that they are making it up or greatly misrepresenting what they do.To be clear, they are probably able to collect a lot of marketing data from various sources, probably including web searches performed through smart speakers. But there is no evidence that backround listening happens. Security researchers have done teardowns, network traffic analysis and other things to look for surreptitious recording. As near as can be told the main processors don't even wake up until they detect the activation word.Of course the activation system can have false positives and that behavior could change due to bugs or malice. So I'm not saying that there is no problem having a voice assistant in your house or phone. But this particular story seems to be BS.Cox media is probably just exploiting ignorance. People don't realize how much information they reveal through their ordinary online activity. So they can provide a detailed dataset and it looks to their customers like it must have come from some wiretapping even though it came from more "conventional" sources.

author: Stray Electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 20, 2023, 12:03:09 am
content: An ad like that by Cox sounds like a good way to kick off a Congressional Hearing into personal privacy issues.

author: RJSV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: December 26, 2023, 12:12:44 am
content: Yeah, along the lines of what Stray Electron was saying:Ask, like for the U.S. in my case, what's the recent history, Justice Dept. et. al. ?If answer is that there haven't been ANY prosecutions or investigations of note in, say the last 5 years, then you could continue along that line, asking about complaints filed, or any other indicators that SHOULD warrent some government agency to do at least maybe a cursury look...THEN its time for sounding an alarm.Notice how far I've tried to lean, in favor of a simple, non-hysterical explanation. Partially because that some big agency like that has been created in the first place, often in response to existing abuses.I do know for sure, that telecom services regularly scan the MMS system text messages,as I've had occasional service 'glitches', after texting local Cannabis dispensaries (lol).With communication to a legal business, like that, I insisted that the telecom provider reinstate my account. But it did happen, and many folks would not have been as firm as I had been. (Heck, I don't know what they would do...maybe change the service provider).