The latest news about details Apps that listen to users on behalf of various advertising circuits has something shocking: it seems that many programs listen in silence to everything that happens around them, waiting for a particular sound to be picked up.
But how do these apps work? To put it all in a nutshell, do you have in mind those programs that simulate ultrasounds to call (or annoy) dogs? Or to "chase away" flies and mosquitoes? What happens here is similar, but in reverse. There is currently no solid certainty of how many YouTube's ADS, but click on them, are using this mechanism, but our cell phone is actively listening for a particular signal. Not for our voice, but for a precise signal: a small ultrasonic segment that can be reproduced by any advertisement on TV or on the web. For us it is impossible to hear it, but for the mobile phone to pick it up is not so difficult. Once the ultrasound signal has been received, the mobile phone reports a statistic to the responsible house. For example "User X listened to Y ad today".
This is of course more behavior than that illegal, it's a real assault on privacy. Unfortunately the Apps that use this system are more than 230 and they are complicated to find, with a code so hidden in their programming. Other companies may use this programming (provided by a house called Silverpush) to do much more and collect much more user data.
But what can we do in defense? At the moment the list of all the Guilty apps. This is a very serious case that can also involve very famous apps, so a lot of time will be spent negotiating before all the information becomes public. In the meantime, we can't do much in person except of course keep our mobile phone clean of particular Apps or simply isolate it if necessary, so that nobody can pick up anything.
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