Blackburn Seeks Answers From Cox Over Phone Monitoring Claims
Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., on Tuesday sent letters to Cox, Meta and Google seeking information about how Cox allegedly used “active listening” tools to monitor users’ smartphone conversations. Blackburn cited reports claiming Cox Media Group “admitted to investors that it…
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listens to users’ smartphone microphones.” The report said that Cox in a presentation with investors, including Google and Meta, acknowledged using phone conversations to deliver targeted ads. “If this reporting is true, it confirms longstanding suspicions by many consumers that technology and media companies are violating their privacy for profit by marketing products that closely reflect key words or phrases from private conversations,” she said. Cox in a statement Wednesday said its businesses “have never listened to any conversations nor had access to anything beyond third-party aggregated, anonymized, and fully encrypted data sets that can be used for ad placement.” The reports are based on “outdated materials" for a product that CMG Local Solutions "no longer sells (although the product never listened to customers, it has long been discontinued to avoid misperception),” the company said. CMG Local Solutions, like other ad companies, offers tools that “include third-party vendor products powered by data sets sourced from users by various social media and other applications and then packaged and resold to data servicers,” said Cox. “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.” The data can be sold to “third-party companies and converted into anonymized information for advertisers. This anonymized data then is resold by numerous advertising companies.” Meta said in a statement it doesn't use "your phone's microphone for ads and we've been public about this for years. We are reaching out to CMG to get them to clarify that their program is not based on Meta data."