Yet Another Smartphone Privacy Threat

[VMI77]

http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com ... phone.html

Ars Technica reports on a new smartphone privacy threat that bares thinking about: it uses inaudible, ultrasonic sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers. These sounds, above the range of human hearing, are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While you can't hear the sound, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product. Of course, they also know the location of all those appliances, too.

My "dumb" phone works just fine for me.

[suthdj]

Place i worked at 3 years ago had us looking into doing this.

[Glockster]

http://thesilicongraybeard.blogspot.com ... phone.html

Ars Technica reports on a new smartphone privacy threat that bares thinking about: it uses inaudible, ultrasonic sounds to surreptitiously track a person's online behavior across a range of devices, including phones, TVs, tablets, and computers. These sounds, above the range of human hearing, are embedded into TV commercials or are played when a user encounters an ad displayed in a computer browser. While you can't hear the sound, nearby tablets and smartphones can detect it. When they do, browser cookies can now pair a single user to multiple devices and keep track of what TV commercials the person sees, how long the person watches the ads, and whether the person acts on the ads by doing a Web search or buying a product. Of course, they also know the location of all those appliances, too.

My "dumb" phone works just fine for me.

Two interesting quotes from the article's comments....

And what about passive Bluetooth tags that are scattered all over the place, so that when you walk by them the software in the background picks up the id/geo-tag and "calls home" your location, with and audio and video sample of what you're doing.

If you didn't build the hardware, and you didn't write the software that runs on it, you cant trust it. Period.

AND

The Amish are on to something...

[The Annoyed Man]

I like that last one about the Amish. Unfortunately, I am tied to smartphone tech for the next couple of years. But I can see a burner phone in my future.

[Glockster]

I like that last one about the Amish. Unfortunately, I am tied to smartphone tech for the next couple of years. But I can see a burner phone in my future.

I think that someone needs to come up with an acoustic protection case/bag to put them in -- like the RFID proof bags now.

[Abraham]

Read "Future Crimes" and you'll know that "everything" can and will be hacked, most especially so-called 'smart phones'.