For years, people have noticed advertisements for products they recently discussed in conversation suddenly appearing on their devices.
While this can be unsettling, it's actually a pretty common experience. Online platforms, including social media, use users' search history, browsing activities, location data, social activities, behavioral patterns and more, to know users' intentions.
In other words, it happens due to how targeted advertising works.
While many others don't really care, or dismissed this as a coincidence, it turns out that there's more to the story.
According to a report, a marketing firm has confirmed that smartphones are not just tracking users' online activity, because they're also listening to whatever people say out loud, whenever they can hear it.
What happens here is that, smartphones may indeed be listening to people's conversations.
Cox Media Group (CMG), a major player in the media industry, whose clients include tech giants like Google, Facebook and Amazon, admitted to using software that monitors users’ conversations through the microphones of their devices.
According to the report, the company has developed a technology that can listen to and analyze ambient conversations through the microphones in smartphones, smart TVs, and other devices.
This technology is dubbed "Active Listening."
But because not everything can be heard, the technology works by combining voice data from various of sources, which is captured from everyday conversations
The technology then uses AI to process whatever the technology can hear, and link them together to create a behavioral data., in order to understand what users might be considering purchasing.
Long story short, by analyzing conversations, the software can identify potential customers and deliver ads that align with their spoken intentions.
CMG claims that this allows advertisers to target consumers more precisely than ever before.
The technology is first revealed when CMG presented its technology to investors, where the company said that it can give advertisers deeper insights into consumer intentions and behavior, by going beyond traditional online tracking methods.
"Advertisers can pair this voice-data with behavioral data to target in-market consumers," the pitch deck states.
The revelation has again raised serious questions about privacy, user consent, and the ethics of targeted advertising.
One of the most troubling aspects of this revelation is how easily users may have unknowingly consented to being monitored.
CMG reportedly claimed in a now-deleted statement that users agree to active listening every time they download a new app or update an existing one.
"We know what you're thinking. Is this even legal? It is legal for phones and devices to listen to you. When a new app download or update prompts consumers with a multi-page term of use agreement somewhere in the fine print, Active Listening is often included," CMG statement reportedly said.
Most users don't read fine prints in detail, and companies that know this, often put clauses that permit them to initiate invasive practices to users.
It's worth noting that data protection laws around the world vary in how targeted advertisements are treated.