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Marketer sparks panic with claims it uses smart devices to eavesdrop on people (arstechnica.com)

submitted 11 months ago by thehatfox@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 10 points 11 months ago (1 children)

At the risk of being called a neckbeard:

Before Cox Media Group sent its statement, though, CMG's claims of collecting data on "casual conversations in real-time," as its blog stated, were questionable. CMG never explained how our devices would somehow be able to garner the computing and networking power necessary to record and send every conversation spoken within the device's range in "real-time," unbeknownst to the device's owner. The firm also never explained how it acquired the type of access that requires law enforcement to obtain a warrant. This is despite CMG's blog claiming that with Active Listening, advertisers would be able to know "the second someone in your area is concerned about mold in their closet," for example.

In other words, they were hyping up capabilities they don't have.

Are you familiar with Wireshark and network sniffing? Instead of just wondering, why not look for yourself what these devices are sending out? It's not hard, and it's not a secret.

I'm not scared of them, because I know exactly how they work and exactly what's going across my network at all times.

[–] currycourier@lemmy.world 3 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Are you able to dissect the packet contents tho? I can see the raw hex payloads of any packets on my network but that doesn't really tell me much about the data actually in them

[–] TimeSquirrel@kbin.social 6 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

You can at the very least tell when it is and is not transmitting data when you talk around it. You can set up experiments, like having a casual conversation with and without the "wake word" and compare packets. If it starts spewing data every time you talk, or if it remains mostly idle with just occasional DNS lookups or NTP updates and such, you'll know.