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So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using too

So I have a bit of intimate knowledge of this. Not sure what I can answer but for years my company worked on an Automatic Content Recognition project using tools from a team called Cognitive Networks who were bought by Vizio and makes up the tech that did this. If I understand correctly the founder of Vizio kept this tech for himself in the sale of Vizio. When developing this we would work directly with Cognitive checking sync'd apps. We knew for a long time that they could see our content in their office while we tested. Note LG got caught on this about 2-3 years ago and made ACR apps opt-in which pretty much killed it for LG. AFAIK Samsung never did the exact same thing a bunch of providers saw the writing on the wall and dumped this sort of technology a few years back. It had some really cool applications for interactive sync to broadcast apps but the privacy concerns killed it for a lot for a lot of manufacturers.

AJ007 10y ago
Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's internet usage directly to marketers and other parties right now. As far as I can tell, as long as it is buried somewhere in the terms and conditions no one cares. Of course, other companies that are actually serving the content are doing far more than just passively monitoring your viewing habits. From my best guess, Facebook is logging every signal it can from content/pictures/videos it displays to users. Even if you didn't click like, comment, or click through the link it knows the story captured your attention. I had an interesting case with Instagram where after viewing enough pictures of women's butts it started also showing men's bare butts in my feed too.. at least until I never opened any of them, and they disappeared. Users should consider that content providers are going to have extremely deep data sets of even the most minute dimensions of their political leanings, porn viewing habits, dating preferences, and gullibilities. All of this will make what TV shows you watched between Netflix and NBC beyond mundane. With an open web, where we get content from the source, this shouldn't actually be possible. Thank the platform business model.
- mirkules 10y ago
  Is it possible to bring about a similar complaint against Facebook with the FTC? Or, if the FTC is the wrong agency, what would be the right one? Of particular concern are "shadow profiles" - dossiers on people who have never even used or consented to using Facebook[1]. I'm no lawyer, but there could be precedent per this Vizio case. In my opinion Facebook is hugely overstepping people's privacy bounds, even if they do bury what they do with some of the data in their terms of service. I never even knew about DeepFace, or mouse cursor movements, or any of the multitudes of violations of privacy outlined in the article below, and frankly it scares me and makes me angry. [1]http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/ http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/
  - sogen 10y ago
    crickets
  - scient 10y ago
    By using FB, you consent to them using the information about you that others and you yourself provide. Dont like it? Dont use FB.
    - seppin 10y ago
      don't like the single de facto platform for communication online? don't use it. i'm sure your friends will get ahold of you somehow. maybe whatsapp?
      - dpark 10y ago
        On the one hand, Facebook is ubiquitous enough that the government could probably step in and regulate them and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable. On the other hand, I don't use Facebook and I'm getting along just fine. I have an account but log in about once a year. "Don't use it" is a legitimate option.
    - hedora 10y ago
      They still track you even if you don't have an account. Your friends give them more than enough info for them to create a detailed dossier.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Archio 10y ago
I'm curious, did anyone on your team raise any ethical concerns in regards to the potential privacy violation? If not, how was the topic handled by employees/management?
- badloginagain 10y ago
  I'd expect it wasn't handled. If it comes up, 'Let legal deal with it'.
- hueving 10y ago
  If we expect employees speaking up to fix this, we are going to live in constant disappointment. The pro-privacy people live in a very small, but loud, echo chamber. We need to be proactive with developing pro-privacy technologies if we expect something to be done about this. The majority of the population and the majority of developers seem to not care at all about intimately targeted ads.
  - TeMPOraL 10y ago
    It's not just apathy, it's also because there's often so much you can do without pissing off the management or generally looking like a "bad culture fit". And then they'll get someone else to do it anyway. At my current job, I don't have any privacy-related issues, but I have to handle occasional clueless ideas from the customer. It usually goes like this: They: We want to have this security-related change X. Me: Uh ok... but are you sure it's a good idea? What's your threat model? They: ??? Me: You see, this change will make it more difficult for user to do Y, with no real benefit to security, because A, B and C. They: Uh... yes, you're right; let's not do it then. Fast-forward one or two other attempts at proposing the same change and half a year later, I find the change implemented in the codebase anyway. Turns out some other manager on customer's side asked someone else in my company to implement it. -.-
- mikeryan 10y ago
  Not really - we talked about it and expected more consumer concerns from other outlets. This work was not being done in secret, when ACR was the hot item it was well known in the industry how it worked. We figured the the vendors would deal with the issues as they were raised - and they did despite some of the potential of the technology for some cool interactive apps the most part it died. The difference between what we worked on and what Cognitive/Inscape eventually did and got dinged for was that we were using this technology to build sync to broadcast apps not for tracking viewing and usage habits. The work we did never got to large scale deployments and we honestly forgot a bit about it. I knew what Inscape was doing - nothing secret just kind of in the industry weeds - post Vizio sale but honestly didn't think that much about it until now.
msmith10101 10y ago
Guess this is what spurred the investigation: https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-watching-you https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-... Still, how did this article come about? What is a whistle blower?
- twunde 10y ago
  A whistle blower is a term for an insider who leaks a company's criminal practices to the government. They can get a percentage of monies recovered through lawsuits
  - msmith10101 10y ago
    Sorry, I meant to ask "was it a whistleblower?". Just curious how exactly this whole gnarly situation was discovered.
pdimitar 10y ago
What proof do you have for what you're claiming, please? If you have intimate knowledge then you should know that many (me included) could accuse you of trying to push an agenda or divert the attention by posting what you did. How do you really know LG stopped their data collection? Sure they might have made a checkbox be switched off by default, but what does that say about the underlying software? IMO, nothing. It might have been a PR damage control campaign without an actual change.
- knite 10y ago
  As a former Cognitive and Inscape employee, @mikeryan is largely correct. Note that fingerprinting happens on the TV - no actual content was sent back to us. Still absolutely creepy.* * Not the opinion of my (former) employer.
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    Once the data is sold, the cat is out of the bag. The service might not send sensitive info by itself but the DBs of the buyers might contain enough data for cross-referencing to personally identify you without a shadow of doubt. As another poster here asked: were there any ethical discussions in the organization?
    - knite 10y ago
      Individually yes, organizationally not that I know of.
- FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
  Quick tip: If you actually care about being downvoted, dont complain about being downvoted. Many people will do so just for mentioning it, it is against the rules, and it's whining about imaginary, non-transferrable internet points
  - pdimitar 10y ago
    Corrected. Foreign thinking to me -- but point is taken. Thank you.
Shivetya 10y ago
going to be really curious how siri/alexa/google voice activated devices in home are going to be treated in the future. eventually even these will likely have video in ability

AJ007 10y ago

Thanks for posting this. When I saw the original FTC story I recalled reading about this once or twice in the past but couldn't think of any key phrases or sources. In response to some of the other comments here, basically what they are guilty of isn't spying but failing to properly disclose and opt-in users. There is a particular major AV vendor who is selling raw clickstream data of millions of their user's internet usage directly to marketers and other parties right now. As far as I can tell, as long as it is buried somewhere in the terms and conditions no one cares. Of course, other companies that are actually serving the content are doing far more than just passively monitoring your viewing habits. From my best guess, Facebook is logging every signal it can from content/pictures/videos it displays to users. Even if you didn't click like, comment, or click through the link it knows the story captured your attention. I had an interesting case with Instagram where after viewing enough pictures of women's butts it started also showing men's bare butts in my feed too.. at least until I never opened any of them, and they disappeared. Users should consider that content providers are going to have extremely deep data sets of even the most minute dimensions of their political leanings, porn viewing habits, dating preferences, and gullibilities. All of this will make what TV shows you watched between Netflix and NBC beyond mundane. With an open web, where we get content from the source, this shouldn't actually be possible. Thank the platform business model.

mirkules 10y ago
Is it possible to bring about a similar complaint against Facebook with the FTC? Or, if the FTC is the wrong agency, what would be the right one? Of particular concern are "shadow profiles" - dossiers on people who have never even used or consented to using Facebook[1]. I'm no lawyer, but there could be precedent per this Vizio case. In my opinion Facebook is hugely overstepping people's privacy bounds, even if they do bury what they do with some of the data in their terms of service. I never even knew about DeepFace, or mouse cursor movements, or any of the multitudes of violations of privacy outlined in the article below, and frankly it scares me and makes me angry. [1]http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/ http://veekaybee.github.io/facebook-is-collecting-this/
- sogen 10y ago
  crickets
- scient 10y ago
  By using FB, you consent to them using the information about you that others and you yourself provide. Dont like it? Dont use FB.
  - seppin 10y ago
    don't like the single de facto platform for communication online? don't use it. i'm sure your friends will get ahold of you somehow. maybe whatsapp?
    - dpark 10y ago
      On the one hand, Facebook is ubiquitous enough that the government could probably step in and regulate them and it wouldn't be entirely unreasonable. On the other hand, I don't use Facebook and I'm getting along just fine. I have an account but log in about once a year. "Don't use it" is a legitimate option.
  - hedora 10y ago
    They still track you even if you don't have an account. Your friends give them more than enough info for them to create a detailed dossier.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Archio 10y ago

I'm curious, did anyone on your team raise any ethical concerns in regards to the potential privacy violation? If not, how was the topic handled by employees/management?

badloginagain 10y ago
I'd expect it wasn't handled. If it comes up, 'Let legal deal with it'.
hueving 10y ago
If we expect employees speaking up to fix this, we are going to live in constant disappointment. The pro-privacy people live in a very small, but loud, echo chamber. We need to be proactive with developing pro-privacy technologies if we expect something to be done about this. The majority of the population and the majority of developers seem to not care at all about intimately targeted ads.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  It's not just apathy, it's also because there's often so much you can do without pissing off the management or generally looking like a "bad culture fit". And then they'll get someone else to do it anyway. At my current job, I don't have any privacy-related issues, but I have to handle occasional clueless ideas from the customer. It usually goes like this: They: We want to have this security-related change X. Me: Uh ok... but are you sure it's a good idea? What's your threat model? They: ??? Me: You see, this change will make it more difficult for user to do Y, with no real benefit to security, because A, B and C. They: Uh... yes, you're right; let's not do it then. Fast-forward one or two other attempts at proposing the same change and half a year later, I find the change implemented in the codebase anyway. Turns out some other manager on customer's side asked someone else in my company to implement it. -.-
mikeryan 10y ago
Not really - we talked about it and expected more consumer concerns from other outlets. This work was not being done in secret, when ACR was the hot item it was well known in the industry how it worked. We figured the the vendors would deal with the issues as they were raised - and they did despite some of the potential of the technology for some cool interactive apps the most part it died. The difference between what we worked on and what Cognitive/Inscape eventually did and got dinged for was that we were using this technology to build sync to broadcast apps not for tracking viewing and usage habits. The work we did never got to large scale deployments and we honestly forgot a bit about it. I knew what Inscape was doing - nothing secret just kind of in the industry weeds - post Vizio sale but honestly didn't think that much about it until now.

msmith10101 10y ago

Guess this is what spurred the investigation: https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-watching-you https://www.propublica.org/article/own-a-vizio-smart-tv-its-... Still, how did this article come about? What is a whistle blower?

twunde 10y ago
A whistle blower is a term for an insider who leaks a company's criminal practices to the government. They can get a percentage of monies recovered through lawsuits
- msmith10101 10y ago
  Sorry, I meant to ask "was it a whistleblower?". Just curious how exactly this whole gnarly situation was discovered.

pdimitar 10y ago

What proof do you have for what you're claiming, please? If you have intimate knowledge then you should know that many (me included) could accuse you of trying to push an agenda or divert the attention by posting what you did. How do you really know LG stopped their data collection? Sure they might have made a checkbox be switched off by default, but what does that say about the underlying software? IMO, nothing. It might have been a PR damage control campaign without an actual change.

knite 10y ago
As a former Cognitive and Inscape employee, @mikeryan is largely correct. Note that fingerprinting happens on the TV - no actual content was sent back to us. Still absolutely creepy.* * Not the opinion of my (former) employer.
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Once the data is sold, the cat is out of the bag. The service might not send sensitive info by itself but the DBs of the buyers might contain enough data for cross-referencing to personally identify you without a shadow of doubt. As another poster here asked: were there any ethical discussions in the organization?
  - knite 10y ago
    Individually yes, organizationally not that I know of.
FullMtlAlcoholc 10y ago
Quick tip: If you actually care about being downvoted, dont complain about being downvoted. Many people will do so just for mentioning it, it is against the rules, and it's whining about imaginary, non-transferrable internet points
- pdimitar 10y ago
  Corrected. Foreign thinking to me -- but point is taken. Thank you.

Shivetya 10y ago

going to be really curious how siri/alexa/google voice activated devices in home are going to be treated in the future. eventually even these will likely have video in ability