Meta articles

marketing

Facebook partner admits to eavesdropping on conversations via phone mics for ad targeting

"We know what you're thinking. Is this even legal?"
A hot potato: For almost as long as we've had smartphones, there has been the belief that they surreptitiously listen to our spoken conversations to serve us targeted ads; most people have experienced seeing an ad on Facebook for something they were recently talking about. It's always been claimed that this type of privacy invasion doesn't happen. However, a marketing agency, whose clients included Facebook and Google, has admitted to using an "Active Listening" feature that eavesdrops on conversations via phone mics to gather data.