Cox Media Group claims to be listening to private conversations to sell advertisements
Cox Media Group claims to be listening to private conversations to sell advertisements
“What would it mean for your business if you could target potential clients who are actively discussing their need for your services in their day-to-day conversations? No, it's not a Black Mirror episode—it's Voice Data, and CMG has the capabilities to use it to your business advantage.”
While I’m dubious of the claim due to the robust permissions management in the latest versions of iOS and Android, it is interesting that a company has come out and said they are doing what everyone is thinking.
And yes they are a subsidiary of the parent of Cox Communications, the ISP, so I would be switching to a competitor ASAP if I had their services
They're like "we should address the fact that this product sounds exactly like a bleak dystopian future"
The comparisons to Black Mirror are crazy considering that the show serves to always show the downsides of dystopian tech.
Weird for a self proclaimed marketing company to not know that.
well, you call it dystopia, they call it brainstorming :P
American ISPs have no alternatives. Switching to competition usually requires moving a few states away uness you want 2000s DSL for $80 a month.
I used to live in Cox’s service area and before I moved they were pretty much the only show in town besides overpriced AT&T UVerse DSL. AT&T actually did upgrade the service to fiber but they called to offer it after we already closed on our current home at that point which actually has awesome fiber service from a local provider.
Comcast owns my area with fake competition from Verizon. "WeRe TecHnIcaLlY nOt A mOnoPolY. "
FUCK we have Cox and my alternative would be using my cellphone. This shit should be illegal? Is it thier modem and router? They really hate if you use your own.
it has gotten a lot better in recent years with rural broadband at least
I have 2 different ISP options for fiber to the home now, both local smaller companies rather than the mega ISPs we all know and hate. Prices are about $50 / 100Mb symmetrical for both ISPs
I pay $150 for the same speed. No options. They even lie tell you its twice the speed even though it never actually changed.
FWIW a VPN prevents them from inspecting your traffic, so if you're concerned about this it might be a worthwhile investment.
I think breaking port forward was to get you to use there damn app.
If you really want to escape from the data-mining ad-driven model, you could always switch to Google Fiber.
Not available. Comcast would never allow it. They got there foul tendrils down to the municipal level.
They're all doing it. We're carrying around listening devices 24/7 and expecting evil corporations not to spy on everything we say and do... why? Because they said they wouldn't? Because they put their customers ahead of profits? What have these companies done to earn even the slightest degree of trust?
It’s the technical hurdles that have me skeptical that they could do it, at a cost that is profitable, without it being widely known how. Either it’s novel and not being done by anyone by CMG; or it’s not, in which case why is CMG marketing like they are the only ones doing it.
But it’s probably safer to assume that everyone is already listening in so that you are prepared because you know they would if they could.
Suspicious that this article was written by Joseph Cox.
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CMG said in a statement that “CMG Local Solutions markets a wide range of advertising tools. Like other advertising companies, some of those tools include third-party vendor products powered by data sets sourced from users by various social media and other applications then packaged and resold to data servicers. Advertising data based on voice and other data is collected by these platforms and devices under the terms and conditions provided by those apps and accepted by their users, and can then be sold to third-party companies and converted into anonymized information for advertisers. This anonymized data then is resold by numerous advertising companies.” “CMG businesses do not listen to any conversations or have access to anything beyond a third-party aggregated, anonymized and fully encrypted data set that can be used for ad placement. We regret any confusion and we are committed to ensuring our marketing is clear and transparent,” the statement added.
lol they are just paying Facebook and other companies for data
This is literally 1984
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever
a marketing technique fit for the future
I hate this so much.
(In case we didn't have enough with dropbox selling our data for AI training!)