The other day I was talking to a friend about an article I read about Thailand and how great this trip looked. After a short while, I picked up my phone to look at something else and to my surprise, among the ads that popped up in the browser was an ad for Thailand.

Are they constantly spying on me through my cell phone? The example is made up but the situation is very real and always leads us to the same question. Are they listening to us through our mobile phones? Such incidents make us say yes, but technology experts and some research confirm the opposite.

The “active listening” debate. But it’s still not clear that they haven’t. A series of leaked documents, cited in an article on 404 Media, show this. In them, television and radio company Cox Media Group (CMG) describes its “active listening” technology, which uses artificial intelligence to “capture interesting data in real time by listening to our conversations.”

CMG (allegedly) spies for saleThe leaked presentation makes it clear that “advertisers can pair this voice data with behavioural data to target consumers in the market.” Or again: exactly what we described in that invented example happened, and if you were talking about a specific product or service, you were targeted with targeted ads related to that product or service.

Google stops working with CMG. They contacted Google to warn them about the problems created by its commercial alliance with CMG in 404. After learning the facts, Google removed the company from its “partner program.” Meta is also analyzing the situation to assess whether CMG violated its terms of service.

This is coming from far away. They’ve mentioned this CMG targeted advertising service twice more recently in 404. In December 2023, for example, they said that CMG practically stuck its chest out when talking about it. The company itself published an article a little earlier, in November, in which they even took a strange stance: “We know what you’re thinking, is this legal?” The content, now deleted but accessible via Archive.org, gave more details about the active listening service.

And they charged advertisers a fortuneAt CMG, they specialized in hyperlocal news and charged advertisers who wanted to use their active listening service a hefty fee. So they charged $100 per day to clients who wanted to target users within a 10-mile radius, or $200 per day if the radius was extended to 20 miles.

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