Marketing company deceived customers … must pay $880k

Ars Technica is reporting that a marketing company who deceived customers about the fact that listening can make them money, is now needing to pay almost a billion dollars. I assume this is going to the FTC, as they are involved in this investigation.

The first paragraph of the article says:

The FTC said that CMG, 1010 Digital Works, and MindSift marketed Active Listening to small businesses and falsely claimed that the service would help the businesses target customers in specific geographies.

Targeted listening is available on devices like your lady A, and your Google. Iphones have it if you turn on the option to have Siri awake when you say a command, but it is off by default.

While Amazon has been targeted in this practice where its device is listening, it claims it isn’t. But how else is it able to respond to its wake word or if it thinks it heaard its wake word? Unless you turn off the mike, its always listening. Even if nothing is going on at the home or office.

The article continues:

According to the FTC, the marketing companies also claimed that advertising targets opted into Active Listening by agreeing to third-party apps’ terms of service but that this was also not true.

Even if Active Listening worked as CMG, 1010 Digital Works, and MindSift claimed, the FTC would still take issue with it, the government agency said:

If the Active Listening service had functioned as advertised, this collection and use of consumers’ voice data without adequate consent would itself violate Section 5 of the FTC Act.

The article’s final paragraph says:

Active Listening may not have been real, but smart devices can still capture data in less obvious ways. More realistic risks include Meta smart glasses sharing intimate recordings, smart TVs tracking viewing habits, Ring cameras spying on users, and voice assistants listening without a proper prompt.

The service must have some reality, otherwise it would not be responding to its word.

To read more from Ars Technica, please read the article titled Marketer that claimed it could tap devices for ad targeting will pay $880K settlement .

Feel free to comment on this and let me know what you think.