Cox Media Group Brags It Spies On Users With Device Microphones To Sell Targeted Ads, But It’s Not Clear They Actually Can
from the watching-you-watching-me dept
For years, the cable industry has dreamed of a future where they could use your cable box to actively track your every behavior using cameras and microphones and then monetize the data. At one point way back in 2009, Comcast made it clear they were even interested in using embedded microphones and cameras to monitor the number of people in living rooms and listen in on conversations.
Last December, internal documents obtained by 404 Media indicated that cable giant Cox Communications claimed to have finally achieved this longstanding vision: it was now able to monitor consumers via microphones embedded in phones, smart TVs, and cable boxes, leverage the audio data, then exploit it to target those users with tailored advertising.
At the time, the Cox Media Group (CMG) website openly bragged about the technology, crowing about how such surveillance was perfectly legal (though, even under our pathetic existing privacy and wiretap laws, it very likely isn’t). Shortly after the 404 Media story appeared, Cox deleted the website in question and issued a statement denying they were doing anything out of the ordinary:
CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement. We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent.
Eight months later and 404 Media has obtained another pitch deck being used by Cox, crowing about its ability to listen in on consumers in order to sell them targeted ads under the company’s “Active Listening” program. This pitch deck advertises the company’s partnerships with Google, Amazon, Microsoft. Google says it removed CMG from its Partners Program after an “investigation” prompted by 404 Media.
It’s not clear Cox is truly capable of doing what it claims or if it’s overstating its abilities just to woo ad partners. But the marketing deck is pretty clear:
“The power of voice (and our devices’ microphones),” the slide deck starts. “Smart devices capture real-time intent data by listening to our conversations. Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers. We use AI to collect this data from 470+ sources to improve campaign deployment, targeting and performance.”
If real, it likely includes the myriad “smart” television sets that increasingly have little to no real consumer privacy standards. It may also include everything from smart phones and cable boxes to the myriad other household “smart” devices with embedded mics, from home security hubs to your smart refrigerator.
Cox’s original, since deleted website crowing about its “active listening” tech even went so far as to compare its own technology to a black mirror episode:
What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it’s not a Black Mirror episode—it’s Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage.
Since the U.S. is too corrupt to pass a meaningful modern internet-era privacy law or regulate data brokers, it remains a sort of wild west when it comes to consumer surveillance and monetization. Companies routinely justify the behavior by insisting the data is “anonymized”; a meaningless, gibberish word used to pretend these kinds of ad surveillance systems are legal, private, and secure.
Because corporate lobbying has increasingly boxed in privacy regulation at the FCC and FTC, the folks supposedly tasked with investing potential privacy abuses lack the staff, resources, and authority to police the problem at the massive scale it’s happening. And that’s before recent Supreme Court rulings further stripped away the independence and authority of U.S. regulators.
The U.S. government, keen to bypass warrants by buying consumer data from data brokers themselves, has repeatedly made it clear that making money is more important than consumer trust and public safety. As a result we have countless companies monitoring your every fart, and non-transparently selling it to any number of noxious individuals who can use it to cause active harm (see: Wyden’s revelations on abortion clinic visitor data).
Filed Under: behavior ads, consumers, microphones, privacy, security, smart tvs, surveillance, tracking
Companies: cox
Comments on “Cox Media Group Brags It Spies On Users With Device Microphones To Sell Targeted Ads, But It’s Not Clear They Actually Can”
This is exactly why the Federal Government would rather pass an unconstitutional law than deal with actual privacy threats.
butjusttheCEOs
What would it mean for your business if you could target potential COX management staff who are actively discussing intrusive technology in their day-to-day conversations?
We here at FUCEOS use AI to secretly monitor CEOs of major corporations so we can monetize their every conversation. It’s everything you think they say, plus more!
Oh, yeah. Give us your money.
….
I’d actually prefer the opposite service if I were a company concerned about improving customer satisfaction and increasing sales: knowing when people are talking trash about my products.
How to prevent Active Listening?
Surely there is a way to prevent this… ACL on a firewall or router? Port blocks?
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Or some tape in microphone hole(s)? The remote too surely contains one or microphone (one for noise suppression) but who ever wanted a listening remote?
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“The” remote? What remote?
Cox is a cable provider. Nobody should be subscribing to cable T.V. anymore, and DOCSIS modems generally don’t have remotes. Do those modems even have microphones or speakers?
I’ll note, though, that what Karl calls a “denial” has enough ambiguity to maybe not be one. Read closely: “CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement.” That can be read as “CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations […] beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement.” (A comma before the first “or” would resolve that ambiguity; is its absence a mistake, or a calculated choice?)
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idk, maybe the prior comment reference to a remote was for a television remote as some tvs have an annoying feature where you can give it verbal commands.
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I don’t understand how it could refer to a television remote: Cox would have no access to that. A cable-box remote, maybe, but the preceding comment did mention that nobody should be using those anymore.
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Step one: find an online video channel that is 24×7 horror — the most awful terrible stuff possible
Step two: bring it up on a spare laptop
Step three: put the TV remote (the one with the microphone) on the laptop – and make sure the sound is on
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Step 0: Ask if the Rifftrax people are okay with this.
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That’d only work if the cable boxes connect via I.P.; if they’re full DOCSIS clients, probably at most a few people in the world have devices in their homes capable of firewalling those.
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The firewall device would go between the TV (and the rest of the home network) and the gateway…
If the gateway has microphones, kill it with fire.
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But how would a cable company have access to television microphones? I think even if they said “television”, they must have meant the cable-receiver box that attaches to each. (Kill it with fire, yes; we are talking about linear television here.)
Many of those boxes directly take a co-axial cable, and speak DOCSIS. There’d be no practical way to firewall them and have them still work. Some newer boxes connect via wi-fi, in which case firewalling would be possible in theory—if the legitimate and illigitimate traffic could be distinguished.
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Yeah, it’s called ‘Don’t buy devices with built in microphones’.
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Given that speakers and microphones are kind of the same thing, that’s basically “don’t buy televisions”. Which is actually good advice, when they also all seem to come with shitware, but let’s be up-front about it.
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So a device that emits sound is the same thing as a device that receives it? So why do walkie-talkies have both a speaker and a microphone if each does the exact same job as the other? 🤦♂️
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You’re being deliberately obtuse here. You know, as well as I, that they can/will embed microphones with the speakers, so they can cull all of that glorious privacy you thought you had.
The world already had enough pedants. They’re called programmers.
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The statement was “kind of” the same, not exactly the same. The general reasons for devices to have both are so that they can do both at the same time, and because they have different requirements in terms of sensitivity/volume, directionality, and frequency; also, microphone arrays can be used to improve fidelity.
But the choice of whether to use a particular voice coil to make vibrations or to detect them is often more about software than hardware. Do not assume that a compromised firmware image couldn’t turn a speaker into a poor-quality microphone. (Perhaps directly at the sound controller, or perhaps by using a system-on-chip’s pin-multiplexor to re-route those pins to a general-purpose-input/output sub-system.)
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Yes, a speaker can pick up audio. You will need a good amplifier.
Almost anything can be used to obtain audio from the surrounding area. Vibrations in a wall can be read remotely via laser.
Re: How to prevent Active Listening?
Brian, there is no legal way to prevent active listening.
The devices that have the microphones embedded are often owned by the company itself, and which you must return to the company or be charged outrageous amounts later. The devices that are not owned by them are designed to be brittle so if you make changes, they will stop working (at your cost), and any problems related to your devices may be flagged, and used as an excuse to not provide any support to you (i.e. tickets may be opened, but they get closed without notice 30 days later). There already is a communistic social credit system in place by all the baron tech monopolies.
Any technical change would require opening up the hardware, and making permanent changes. The data transfer would also likely occur over interfaces which you do not control (i.e. Coax, baseband modem locked by firmware, etc). The entire thing is a shit show.
There was a research article at one point that discussed a way to disable microphones based on MEMS, using a targeted high frequency tone generator, several years back. Its unclear whether this would be viable as no health and safety testing as done; and it was targeted solely at the microphones picking up the local environment.
Soon, this will apply only to the dozens of people that use Cox Cable, and I cannot wait.
The only thing COX ever got right was the name.
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I mean the part where they’ve stood up to the RIAA and MPAA on “six strikes” rules was good. They fucked it up, but at least they tried (and are still trying).
On balance they’re probably the least-worst of the major ISPs. They still fucking suck, but at least they’re not Comcast or Charter.
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After 25+ years of working with COX business, and techs I would argue this point.
They are the company that disconnects service at your new home because the prior person had a disconnect for their account pending. You still paid for the service. Then they take 2-3 WEEKS to reconnect after their own fuck up.
This is a simple example of the very best of COX.
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Many years ago they disconnected me. Early. And right after i’d paid the bill. At their office. (Reconnection as per above.)
Somehow they always have network trouble spots (e.g., some connections on a pole) which fail and end up under repair weekly.
Yeah, Cox isn’t any better, they’re just smaller
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31Bob, Cox is a archetypal example of what happens in any centralized monopoly, there are other companies following the same mold anytime you get subsidized and cooperate instead of competing these things happen.
Mises had a lot to say about the flaws in centralized systems back in the 30s, of which, Socialism was the largest one. His writings are a pretty damning teardown of the structural elements involved.
I fear Amazon a whole lot more! Our firewall blocks the “smart” TV from connecting outside our network, but we can’t block the Amazon devices, which include the FireTV remotes. Amazon has far, far better technology capabilities than Cox will ever have…
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We already know what Amazon does and has done in this regard. Yeah, they suck. This is about Cox making claims which are almost certainly largely untrue in order to sell ad slots.
But remember, it’s social media that deserves all the attention and regulatory pressure in order to force them to respect user privacy!
Do your fact checking before writing this article.
Cox Media Group – the radio/TV arm of Cox was sold in 2019. Cox no longer owns them. And Cox Communications is a totally different company.
I’m pretty sure other comments made this exact point the last time you ran this story.
It’s not to hard to check this.
No, wrong. I’ve been assured by the smartest, most moral people that as long as it’s not the red team in charge, everything is good. It’s only if they happen to control too many things that we have any problems at all.