Rumors have made headlines when two Facebook patent describe listening to user’s TVs. On the other hand, Facebook Company continuously denied the allegations but claims that other firms are applying the technique in particular. However, the company is constantly spying on you by downplaying “Ambient audio” tech that really secretly listening to the conversations. It will “never” apply the technique; the company’s official stated that.
Particularly, the microphone if your device would detect, through Bluetooth or signals that is near your tuned TV and record surround sounds. Television shows and another commercial running on it clearly pitched high volume that clearly detects what really users is up to on the TV device and the recorded data goes to the server and update the user’s individual profile” in your households to target users content, with accordance of the patent application report in late 2016.
Patent applications not for Future plans: Facebook Officials
This is not the only company’s technology in order to capture or detect audio signals within the user’s environment. Since 2015 another patent application Facebook says a system that can capture the data in terms of what really a user is watching with the use of “acoustic fingerprinting” to know about ambient audio, or by analyzing electrical signals that comes from the HDMI cable or via television. Patent did not mention that it was all about listening to the user’s Voices and conversations.
When Facebook asked by the Fast Company, Facebook stated that, “it will never apply the patent technique in use, Allen Lo, VP, deputy general counsel and head of intellectual property of Facebook has sent an email.
Filing Patent is common practice
Filing patent is a very common practice in order to prevent the aggression of other companies. It usually seems that patent is being practiced to use it for future looking technology and it is truly speculative in nature and companies usually do that. But Facebook Company’s official denied and stated that “patent has not been used in any of our product and it will never apply in future as well. Therefore, patent applications don’t be taken seriously that it can be used in future product plans.
At the point of U.S Senate testimony, the question was raised to the Facebook CEO, “is Facebook is using some kind of technique to obtained audio form mobile device in order to breach personal information about its user”. Mark Zuckerberg simply responded with the answer, not at all.
However, the company is been involved in storing audio and video uploaded willingly and their terms of service clearly analyze the data. On the other hand, the company’s officials denied the allegations to use the secretly listening to the sounds to shape ads or user’s feed. “Facebook has never used any kind of ambient audio tech that used your microphone in order to inform ads to change what you really see in news fees and we have no plans to do that in the future, the Facebook official further stated that.
Moreover, rumors are on the rise that Facebook is going to use a kind smart speaker product similar to the Amazon Echo and Google Home that would likely to revive the stories of spying. On the other hand, Amazon devices are known for misinterpret conversations as commands to record and release audio to record the user’s conversation.
Secretly recording conversations: it’s already happening
Recording the audio to know that what users are watching, it may seem ridiculous, but it is a bitter truth. There are numbers of companies likewise Alphonos used of using modules in apps in terms of games to listen to the TV audio and identify shows, according to the reports of the New York Times. However, the company stated that they did not record human voices secretly and users of apps with the code can opt at any point in time.
In the year of 2016, Federal Trade Commission have written a note to developers a sense of warning that if they are using any TV observer app to get the data without the consent of the users they are doing criminal activities against the law. Furthermore, after a year researchers found that more than 200 android spy apps are using inaudible sound beacon technology to spy on TV commercials that users are watching.
Simply the conclusion is the advertisers love to get the wealth of the data in order to know about the online habits of the users. So, they try to create some kind of ways to get similar data about what you are watching, listening to and even what you are talking about in the physical world. Facebook may not be listening technically, but we cannot ignore whether they use it in near future or not.
