Some mobile games are listening to what children watch
Just in time for the new season of Black Mirror , another report of a company using smartphones to listen in on users has surfaced. The New York Times reported this week that a number of apps are using software produced by a startup called Alphonso and it uses a smartphone's microphone to listen for particular audio signals in TV shows, advertisements and movies. In many cases, Alphonso then has Shazam identify what those audio snippets are and all of the collected data can then be sold to advertisers who can use it to better target their ads. Alphonso says that its software doesn't record human speech and that its practices are included in app descriptions and privacy policies. Users also have to agree to open up their microphones and location services to the apps before Alphonso's software does any data collection. "The consumer is opting in knowingly and can opt out any time," Ashish Chordia, Alphonso's CEO, told the New York Times . While the New York ...