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Beware of ads that use inaudible sound to link your phone, TV, tablet, and PC
- jnevill 11y agoThis just doesn't seem feasible in the real world. Sending out high frequency sound from a device is one thing, but having the other devices actively listening for the sound, is quite a feat. It's mentioned inside a block of text in a quoteblock in the article: "The inaudible code is recognized and received on the other smart device by the software development kit installed on it.". From where does one get this SDK installed on their device with enough permissions to actively listen for its counterpart ad? There's just too many points of failure for this to be a real threat, or a real marketing tool for that matter.
- benologist 11y agoa) there are apps already that always listen b) lots of developers use ads or other SDKs in their apps, not to mention we just saw Xcode poisoned with a malicious SDK
- peteretep 11y agoXCode wasn't poisoned, someone released a hacked copy of it on a popular file sharing site
- tantalor 11y ago21 May 2014, Arstechnica. "Passive listening will soon be a feature for Facebook app during status updates" http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/passive-listen-will-soon-be-enabled-for-facebook-app-during-status-updates/ http://arstechnica.com/business/2014/05/passive-listen-will-...
- chippy 11y ago2015 this does already exist, but only for the mobile Android app, and it's opt-in. So as you type a status update, it will listen for any music or TV audio and determine what you are listening to.
- superuser2 11y agoHow many Android apps don't have microphone permissions?
- rhubarbquid 11y agoThat was my first too. What's listening for this? Good luck getting me to grant random apps permission to use my mic. It could be a "Smart" TV though, listening for your phone/tablet/laptop, or a device installed in places like cafes...
- ryanhuff 11y agoYou don't think devices such as the Amazon Echo could do such a thing?
- niftich 11y agoPre-6.0 Android permissions aren't granular and are 'take it or leave it' approved at first install. Some apps install services that run at startup. This would make for a rather excellent monetizatation/interactivity strategy for a chat app, which already has all the necessary permissions for 'normal' operation (think Snapchat LIVE or Moments). Sonic networking in action: [1] http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/ http://smus.com/ultrasonic-networking/ [2] https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use-ultrasonic-sounds-to-pair-your-tv-with-your-friends-phones/ https://gigaom.com/2014/06/26/chromecast-will-use-ultrasonic...
- ramidarigaz 11y agoChromecast can do ultrasonic pairing.
- ewams 11y agoFeasible and in action 2 years ago: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mys...
- esaym 11y agoThat is probably a hoax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BadBIOS No one other than one person has ever talked about it.
- tedmiston 11y agoFull disclosure: I work for an audio beacon startup (in bio). You're correct about microphone permissions related to the SDK. On iOS, this means displaying the top colored bar when you're using the microphone too... IMHO it's not something you can just turn on and not realize it's being used. We use our listening tech at concerts and event to distribute triggered content and messages from the speaker infrastructure to attendees' phones (ex. "this drink line is long, go to the other one", "here's a free song from the artist on stage right now", "<sponsor> is giving away a free thing", etc.)
- geon 11y agoWhy not just use bluetooth beacons for that?
- tedmiston 11y agoThe strongest answer is that bluetooth beacons don't work well in huge infrastructure. Sometimes you don't have a place for them to go or they get stolen. Also it's free to use the speaker infrastructure, but outfitting and managing hundreds of beacons is not cheap. Some of our clients have switched to audio beacons for similar reasons. The Brooklyn Museum did a nice writeup of why bluetooth beacons at scale didn't work for them. https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2015/02/04/the-realities-of-installing-ibeacon-to-scale/ https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/blogosphere/2015/02...
- rasz_pl 11y agoYes, BT beacons are not cheap when you buy $100 ones from a startup, also whole article was TLDR:'if only we could but a can of spray paint and change color of beacons, but we cant so oh well'
- makomk 11y agoThose beacons have some kind of rubberized case; you can't really spray-paint that. (Also, last I heard the cheaper beacons still weren't terribly cheap and had awful battery life.)
- privacy101 11y agoSo many apps request permissions that would make this possible that I believe that it is a real threat.
- shas3 11y agoI know at least one group that has used mobile-phone ultrasonics for sonar imaging of breathing. http://apnea.cs.washington.edu/ http://apnea.cs.washington.edu/ In terms of entropy, breathing rate is a lot of information: several breaths per minute. So if something of that rate can be noncooperatively recovered, the claim in your comment about cooperative recovery is dubitable.
- gregwtmtno 11y agoIt sounds crazy, but I noticed my phone was emitting a quiet, high-pitched buzzing sound when I had 2048 open the other day. I wonder if this is what I was noticing.
- melloclello 11y agoWhich 2048 app?
- danneu 11y ago2048+ Plus Pro Free HD
- ceejayoz 11y agoSounds like the name for a Samsung phone.
- ArekDymalski 11y agoNah, not enough Galaxy in there.
- bbcbasic 11y agoI love how they add HD to the title of the app. As if it wouldn't be!
- gregwtmtno 11y agoThis was just 2048 for iOS though I don't know that this was the cause. It might have just been the iphone radio causing interference on the speaker.
- floatrock 11y agoor swamp gas reflecting off the ionosphere. it's probably nothing so nothing to worry about, move along.
- pinkunicorn 11y agoJokes on you, my TV is 15 years old and I've a Nokia 1100.
- anonbanker 11y agothe good old days, when only the crazy people were suspicious of their appliances spying on them.
- grecy 11y agoEven better, I own neither :)
- benihana 11y agoOh my god, that is so interesting and different. You must be a really unique and free thinking person to not own a TV or a phone. I bet you have really interesting opinions!
- beedogs 11y agoOh hey, someone from Reddit decided to comment here instead.
- oh_sigh 11y agoI love how you combat a shit reply with a shit reply of your own. As if Reddit is a single entity and not a collection of somewhat independent communities
- oh_sigh 11y agoI love how you combat a shit reply with a shit reply of your own. As if Reddit is a single entity and not a collection of somewhat independent communities
- grayfox 11y agoThis is ludacris. Where is this currently being applied, if anywhere in the general wild?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- tempestn 11y agoLudacris: http://thekoalition.com/images/2013/05/Ludacris.jpg http://thekoalition.com/images/2013/05/Ludacris.jpg Ludicrous: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ludicrous http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ludicrous (Sorry, normally I wouldn't point out a spelling mistake, but hopefully this one is amusing as well as informative.)
- Jack000 11y agothere's no proof either way, I choose to believe that Ludacris browses hn under a pseudonym
- avn2109 11y agoAgreed. Luda also has > 100 karma and a public key in his profile link.
- nickpsecurity 11y agoHe pretended to run a hacking crew in Gamer. Had dreams of what life would be like as a real one. That's where his transformation and stealthy visits on HN began.
- ewams 11y agoOver 2 years ago: http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mysterious-mac-and-pc-malware-that-jumps-airgaps/ http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/10/meet-badbios-the-mys...
- cbhl 11y ago
- kordless 11y agoListen up. Nothing in this reality, currently, is particularly secure. Use anything outside your own brain at your own risk. Seriously. Things are likely to improve, but it's going to take time.
- recursive 11y ago> Things are likely to improve A rosy view
- kordless 11y agoSomeone must keep the faith. Without it, we're all fucked. :)
- bbcbasic 11y agoYep... these are the good old days when you can think stuff and no one else knows about it. Enjoy it while it lasts little brother.
- kordless 11y agoA multi-tenant only view will lead to obvious outcomes for single tenants. My sense is that this is the nature of things, to vacillate between single-tenant and multi-tenant models. A pure multi-tenant model, which is also highly secure, is probably little different from this reality. It's exceedingly difficult to make things vanish here.
- beloch 11y agoWell, there's one more reason to block online ads and avoid watching TV. It's as if the people developing this tech want to be put out of business.
- TeMPOraL 11y agoThey don't care. They're swimming in money now.
- manigandham 11y agoThis tech gets them more business... they know what they're doing.
- mindslight 11y agoIf untrusted code has this kind of access to your microphone, you have much bigger problems.
- angelbob 11y agoAnd/or an Android phone, apparently.
- mindslight 11y agoIf Android apps can use the microphone without a clear indication, especially in the background, then that is a serious security bug in Android and should be reported with that context and fixed, rather than weird nobody's-fault alarmism.
- rdancer 11y agoWelcome to Android, hope you'll enjoy the stay.
- pilsetnieks 11y agoThat's what you get with a permission model of "hey, if you don't like that this app asks for every permission known to man, just don't use it!"
- mindslight 11y agoWell no. I purposely avoided getting into that territory, even though I have strong feelings probably similar to yours. Even with the take-it-or-leave-it faux-contract of adhesion permission model, there should be a visual indication when an app is using the microphone. Background microphone (not as a result of a directly preceding user intent) should be a separate additional permission, and probably shouldn't be exempted from having a visual notification with an easy way to mute the passive listening.
- lovelearning 11y agoIn Android, it's super simple for an ads framework or a malicious framework - installed as part of some useful app - to run a background service and keep recording microphone and phone calls. It is possible to hack the Android platform or OS to prevent or mitigate mischief like that, but ironically, it requires devices to be rooted. Android architecture rewards the bad guys by obstructing the good guys! I think mass migration of all devices to something like Cyanogenmod is the only solution.
- gradstudent 11y agoDear marketers. Please die horribly. Preferably in a fire.
- mercora 11y agoI noticed hearing strange high pitched background noise i normally tend to hear from power supplies but only at certain advertising spots. I thought the TV might be about to fail, it may is, but this sounds plausible too.
- jacquesm 11y agoWhich ads?
- mercora 11y agoI don't know. I have not thought about this being malicious, so i did not note which spots caused this. But its clearly starting with a spot and end with it. Could also be some kind of issue in the TV with some color combination or stuff like that.
- christianmann 11y agoIt could have also been just a poorly mixed ad.
- Eldarrion 11y agoI do believe they claim that they use inaudible sounds, i.e. something outside a human's hearing range. Sorry, but chances are your TV is going wonky on you.
- raverbashing 11y agoHowever, TV sound is band-limited (Analog TV at ~ 15kHz IIRC, the higher band is used for CC), not sure about digital tv, maybe 20kHz (not considering limitations on the sound circuits + speakers)
- nitrogen 11y agoI think CC is carried in the video's vertical blanking interval, at least in NTSC, rather than the audio.
- JoshTriplett 11y agoOne of many reasons I find it amazing that applications ask for permission to the microphone when they don't have a good reason. The latest Netflix update on Android asks for microphone permissions, saying that in the future they'll offer a way to call Netflix support from within the app. No, that's not a good reason; I have a phone for that. I've specifically avoided that upgrade; I'm hoping that my Nexus gets the upgrade to M before then, so that I can upgrade Netflix but deny it access to the microphone.
- danepowell 11y agoThis is why on-demand permissions are one of the best features of Android 6.0. Don't want Netflix to access your microphone? No problem--don't let it.
- tgb 11y agoDoes it also allow a "popup request for each use" option? Seems like the right option for the Netflix hotline support feature.
- aiiane 11y agoNo, but you can go into the phone settings and re-enable a permission for an app if you change your mind.
- pki 11y agoAren't privacyguard's actions Ask / Never / Always?
- andrewaylett 11y agoMost of them, yes. There are a couple that are just on/off, like wake locks.
- maccard 11y agoAnd remember. iOS has had this since its inception
- lips 11y agoSo a low-level low-pass filter would throw a nice wrench in this, right? I wouldn't really mind having most of my devices limited to 20Khz.
- jacquesm 11y agoDepending on your age you could get away with a lot lower than that and not miss a thing.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- cowkingdeluxe 11y agoHow would you use a low-pass filter on a newer LED TV with HDMI?
- mmastrac 11y agoIt would have to sit between your source(s) and TV and decrypt/recrypt the audio in realtime -- which means it would need to support the various codecs in use today. Would be easier to buy external speakers and wire it up with those.
- joosters 11y agoIf your tv is the thing generating the inaudible signals, it could still choose to play them using its internal speakers, and send just the 'real' audio to the external ones.
- Dowwie 11y agoI think this requires more attention, across all media Submit your comments to the FTC https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/crossdeviceworkshop/ https://ftcpublic.commentworks.com/ftc/crossdeviceworkshop/ for more information about the upcoming event and to access comments: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2015/11/cross-device-tracking https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/events-calendar/2015/11/cros...
- dang 11y ago"Please don't use uppercase for emphasis. If you want to emphasize a word or phrase, put asterisks around it and it will get italicized." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- alexisnorman 11y agoKind of like a reverse Portable People Meter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_Meter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Audio#Portable_People_...
- privacy101 11y agoInvisible light should probably also be kept in mind, although probably not as problematic.
- stuaxo 11y agoThis, is beyond creepy straight out and out surveillance, and they need to piss right off.
- voltagex_ 11y agoCan someone get me a copy of the APK for https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teleca.sam.engine&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.teleca.sam...? It's likely that this has the SilverPush SDK.
- brbsix 11y agohttps://tusfiles.net/3d5ea3kw8nky https://tusfiles.net/3d5ea3kw8nky A very cursory look seems to indicate the microphone permission is used by Gracenote (https://developer.gracenote.com/ https://developer.gracenote.com/) music recognition SDK.
- voltagex_ 11y agoThanks - just for next time, tusfiles seems to use very shady advertisers and I happened to open it in Chrome for Android. I was redirected to another APK download!
- brbsix 11y agoSorry about that. I've had problems with Dropbox removing APKs in the past. Tusfiles is very lenient with that sort of thing but clearly there's a downside I hadn't noticed (ad block was enabled).
- voltagex_ 11y agoDamn, looks like I missed the mark on that one. I was basing my assumptions on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32432785/i-have-updated-android-api-to-23-and-there-is-no-error-in-any-xml-file-but-when http://stackoverflow.com/questions/32432785/i-have-updated-a... which shows that the package we're looking for is com.silverpush.sdk. The developer who asked that question works for the company who released that app. The app description also says "Download MI Mobile and activate today, then just keep your phone with you throughout the day (including while you watch TV) with MI Mobile running in the background." which made me suspicious.
- ericflo 11y agoThis is really cool--it's essentially an audio QR code--and I think could improve the user experience across a number of apps.
- mhuffman 11y agoSo cool! I can't wait until the phone can detect EEG frequencies to guess what I might be thinking so that it can then bombard me with ads about shit I didn't even know I wanted! Bonus points for messaging all my friends on Facebook to let them know I just was thinking about kinky porn! It sure would take all the work out of making decisions (like what I may or may not like) or having to deal with all the pesky extra money and friends I have now!
- fabulist 11y agoSurely OP didn't mean to celebrate being tracked by advertisers. Emotional reactions are understandable, but if you take a step back, the technology could be used in a very different way. The problem is not that it uses sounds which are difficult to hear. The problem is that it does this without user's consent.
- ericflo 11y agoThank you, and yes I should clarify that I'm against that kind of espionage use. It's the technology itself that seems promising for other purposes.
- danso 11y agoExcept with a QR code, I have to physically turn on my camera and point it to the QR code, i.e. I have to intend to process the QR code. Inaudible audio seems to be something that would not require user intention.
- ericflo 11y agoThat's what I think is so cool about it -- half the issue with QR codes is that you have to open an app, point a camera at it, focus, and take a picture. With this technology, you don't have to do any of those things. Nor do you have to get on the same wifi, figure out how to bluetooth pair, or anything else like that.
- sehugg 11y ago@jimfenton recorded some audio from Cartoon Network in an attempt to find these beacons: http://altmode.org/2015/11/13/searching-for-ultrasonic-beacons/ http://altmode.org/2015/11/13/searching-for-ultrasonic-beaco... FSK at 17.5 and 18.5 kHZ is one possibility, but wasn't detected in this experiment.
- jevinskie 11y agoAwesome, thank you for posting with this! I was getting ready to fire up ffmpeg with my network TV tuner to begin searching for this. Now I know of one thing to look for.
- simoncion 11y agoTo nit-pick: Anything under 20kHZ isn't ultrasonic. :) (Not that either you or the blog author called this high-frequency signalling "ultrasound", but it does appear to be what people are calling it. :/ )
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- elf25 11y agoIf it's inaudible, that means I can't hear it, how am I supposed to 'beware' of the thing I can't perceive?
- twerkmonsta 11y agoPretty interesting that SilverPush has a product for "Real time TV Ad Analytics" called PRISM [1]. [1] http://www.silverpush.co/ http://www.silverpush.co/
- ransom1538 11y agoI am happy this was brought up. I have been approached by companies to add in "SDKs" of this sort. They usually offer to pay you per user. When you have scale, these companies while the app is open can scan for other media they need to link. I have witnessed iOS apps processing web ads, tv stations and radio ads. The freakiest was watching the software understand a tv show was playing, detect which show, then off a competing ad in the app. It is quite amazing what a phone can absorb while sitting in a living room with a loud tv blaring (which is most of america). See more: https://www.audiblemagic.com/ https://www.audiblemagic.com/ (Edit, you will see "Facebook" as one of their customers.....)
- chinathrow 11y agoPlease name and shame these companies. Thank you.
- eclipxe 11y agoFacebook has a feature that allows to detect what you're watching or listening to when you post a status update. No secret or conspiracy there.
- a3n 11y agoOK, but how do they present it? As a benefit to users? Or as a benefit to advertisers?
- wahnfrieden 11y agoIt's opt-in.
- eclipxe 11y agoWhen you saw the iOS apps doing this, did they display the red "Recording" indicator bar at the top?
- pepelotas 11y agoHow is this possible if speakers usually have a working range of 20Hz-20KHz, and worse for microphones? It has to be audible
- Daishiman 11y agoI really, really hope this is made illegal. It borders on parody what level of dystopic thinking made this.
- x1798DE 11y agoEven if this is a real threat vector, I imagine that in the time it would take to make this illegal and try and prosecute even one person, it will have been dealt with naturally by device manufacturers. Already this would be easy to defend against with any devices with properly granular permissioning. Meanwhile, anyone this far out on the bleeding edge of trying to track you will have a dozen other fingerprinting mechanisms rolled out by then and will have no problem dropping this ludicrous attack. Legislation is rarely the right tool.
- ubernostrum 11y agoThe legal framework is actually already mostly in place due to laws detailing the necessary consent to record a telephone conversation. So it might not take much to extend that concept to applications on a phone other than the actual phone app.
- lotu 11y agoIt would be hard to argue the wiretap laws apply to recording ultrasonic sounds extracting data from them. Honestly their isn't even the need for the device to store the audio, much less send it off the device.
- ubernostrum 11y agoMicrophone access, especially if it's always-on to listen for the cue, is going to end up recording conversations, and those conversations will almost certainly involve people who are not the phone's owner and so could not have consented to having that phone record them. (also there's the general problem of devices "helpfully" listening all the time for magic phrases like "Hey Siri" or "OK Google")
- peter303 11y agoPeople are so paronoid these days. Our Internet of Things ganging up to control us!
- GhotiFish 11y agonormally i'd say that it's not really paranoid if they're really out to get you... but the attack vector described here. It requires too many devices actively compromised for any usable data to be gleaned. Manufacturers are somewhat sensitive to users demanding to control their devices peripherals. Microphones, webcams, cameras, speakers. It's not perfect, but there's enough moving parts here to make this kind of tracking seem bonkers. For it to work, the person they have target will have blindly agreed to so many things that they have all the information they want on them anyway.
- nightpool 11y ago"blindly agreed to so many things" you mean one permission prompt, on one app they may have downloaded years ago? everything else is just the advertisers including high-frequency beacons in their ad spots—it doesn't require any knowledge or cooperation of any of the intermediary steps.
- coldnebo 11y agoThis is fantastic news. The marketers have given us an excellent key by which to block ads and distinguish ads from content! Nice!
- Lagged2Death 11y agoIt's a lovely sentiment, but if this actually takes off, the content-makers will eventually join in, inserting identical or similar beacons directly into TV/movies etc. for similar reasons.
- givinguflac 11y agoMost of this could probably be mitigated within the home by installing rodent deterrent systems that emit high frequency (inaudible) noise. It would like drown out the lower signal level of this type of signal. S/N ratio for the win.
- chinathrow 11y agoWhat a fucked up world we live in. If you work in advertising and if you work on such systems: be ashamed. Very much ashamed.
- tdaltonc 11y agoThis reminds me of chromecast's ultrasonic guest mode. https://gigaom.com/2014/12/11/chromecast-gets-guest-mode-thanks-to-cool-ultrasonic-tech/ https://gigaom.com/2014/12/11/chromecast-gets-guest-mode-tha...
- digi_owl 11y agoNever mind a certain computer security claim regarding a airgapped computer leaking data.
- owlish 11y agoCould this not also be used in the near future by, say, the LinkedIn app to identify "People You May Know"?
- teaneedz 11y agoWe need a published list of companies using this tech.
- ericflo 11y agoWould chirp.io be placed on this list?
- dennyabraham 11y agoThe microphone permission is one of the most pernicious. What might not be immediately clear to people is that a number of ambient sounds and almost all ambient music emit steganographic location data. Furthermore, additional metadata is encoded in other data that your phone's sensor package can read if it turns out to be on.
- giaour 11y agoSuddenly a blackphone seems like an excellent investment...
- wahsd 11y agoWhy do I get the sense that the advertising industry has a death wish. It's like there is periodically some secret meeting somewhere where they hatch plans for how they can get even the littlest old lady to hate them so much that they run ad blockers on everything and everywhere. BTW, I have always wondered why there are seemingly no solutions for blocking ads on a regular old TV, even if it's just a matter of muting the ads and then unmuting for the show/movie. I remember I used to have a TV that you could easily set a timer on a channel when a commercial block started and then flip through the other channels and once the timer was up it would automatically switch back to the channel with the show or movie you were wanting to watch. I get that that's not technologically very advanced, but the point is that that was many years ago and it's really not gotten better and even such simple solutions have disappeared and now we are left with highly sophisticated systems that will not allow for easy adding of ad blockers.
- a3n 11y agoNow that TVs are connected, TV manufacturers get to have a piece of the ad pie. That would make them as reluctant as Google to make it easy to kill ads.
- alejohausner 11y agoThis is provocative and very tacky, but I'm sure that advertisers can cross correlate many clues about our web behavior, and already have a pretty good idea about our habits and responses to ads. I don't see a real need for this sort of creepy intrusiveness.
- fabulist 11y agoHeuristics are very well and all, but certainty is another matter entirely.
- meowface 11y agoWhile this is very invasive, you have to admit as an engineer that it is cool.
- floatrock 11y agoyes, but, obligatory xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1520/ https://xkcd.com/1520/
- incepted 11y agoThis sounds a lot like some scifi unwarranted fear mongering article. Is there any evidence that such a thing exists?
- lolc 11y agoI was wondering the same thing. Samples or it didn't happen :-)
- peteretep 11y agoIt's a sad day when Apple are the company I trust most with my privacy.
- jakejake 11y agoI feel like Apple actually does offer good privacy features on their devices. Of course watching one's parents just click OK on everything to make the alert dialog go away, makes you realize that the device makers can only do so much.
- upofadown 11y agoTLDR: There is some malware out in the wild called SilverPush that does interesting new bad things.
- mirimir 11y agoWow, I'm impressed! But I'm also prepared. I always mute during TV ads, to reduce brain pollution. None of my boxes have microphones, and most have no audio. And I don't use smartphones.
- trebor 11y agoCombine your techniques with adblocker software, and anyone's pretty much set. I do have systems with mic/speakers, but I block ads. And I don't own a smart TV, just a cheapo dumb one w/o an internet connection.
- mirimir 11y agoYes, I forgot to mention browser security. I use private browsing mode, delete all cookies at browser shutdown, block ads and nonessential scripts, use Privacy Badger, and have disabled many insecure and useless features. But I don't (yet) work in a Faraday cage ;)
- irixusr 11y agoBravo. ive only accomplished half of what you do (I use a an old BB, mask the webcam w/ electric tape)
- Tuumpraesidium 11y agoHmm. While the ethics of using this technology / vector attack for advertising is hardly a difficult question, one thing does amuse me. Nary a thought in this thread at what other little nasties this technology can be used for (I'd suggest looking into "mosquito" deterrents that can be used against teenagers). Here’s some links – whilst you might not immediately realize their connection to this, I’m fairly sure others out there have. The hippocampus, which receives a major cholinergic input from the medial septum/diagonal band3, is important in memory4,5 and exhibits network activity at 40 Hz during relevant behaviours6. Here we show that cholinergic activation is sufficient to induce 40-Hz network oscillations7 in the hippocampus in vitro. Oscillatory activity is generated spontaneously in the CA3 subfield and can persist for hours. <a href="http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6689/abs/394186a0.html">Cholinergic http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v394/n6689/abs/394186a0... induction of network oscillations at 40 Hz in the hippocampus in vitro</a> We used optogenetic tools to selectively stimulate VTA dopaminergic neuron action potential firing in freely behaving mammals. We found that phasic activation of these neurons was sufficient to drive behavioral conditioning and elicited dopamine transients with magnitudes not achieved by longer, lower-frequency spiking. These results demonstrate that phasic dopaminergic activity is sufficient to mediate mammalian behavioral conditioning. <a href="http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1080.short">Phasic http://www.sciencemag.org/content/324/5930/1080.short">Phasi... Firing in Dopaminergic Neurons Is Sufficient for Behavioral Conditioning</a> Neurons were stimulated with a computer-generated steady barrage of random inputs, mimicking weak synaptic conductance transients (the “noise”), together with a larger but still subthreshold postsynaptic conductance, EPSG (the “signal”). DTX reduced the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), defined as the ratio of probability to fire in response to the EPSG and the probability to fire spontaneously in response to noise. <a href="http://www.jneurosci.org/content/22/24/11019.short">Enhancement http://www.jneurosci.org/content/22/24/11019.short">Enhancem... of Signal-to-Noise Ratio and Phase Locking for Small Inputs by a Low-Threshold Outward Current in Auditory Neurons </a> Or, put another way: If people are using this for advertising, imagine what other applications it could have.
- nommm-nommm 11y agoThis gives new meaning to subliminal advertising.
- loginusername 11y ago"... and there is no option to opt-out of this form of cross-device tracking." Does it work with Javascript disabled? Does it work with text-only browsers? How about netcat? Do I have to get a "smartphone" to make this work?