A newly discovered threat uses inaudible, high-frequency sounds to stealthily track an individual’s online behavior across devices such as smartphones, TVs, tablets, and computers – a method better known as cross-device tracking.
The ultrasonic ads are embedded into TV commercials or played when a user comes across a pitch displayed in a computer browser. While the sound cannot be heard by the human ear, a nearby device can detect it. And when one does, browser cookies are able to pair a single user to multiple devices and track what TV commercials the user sees, how long the person watches the ads for, and whether the individual responds to the ads by searching on the Internet or buying the product.
Cross-device tracking raises privacy concerns, the Center for Democracy and Technology wrote in recently filed comments to the Federal Trade Commission. Several people use as many as five connected devices throughout any given day – phone, computer, tablet, wearable health device, and RFID-enabled access fob – and until now, it hasn’t been this easy to track a person’s activity on one and tie it to another.
“As a person goes about her business, her activity on each device generates different data streams about her preferences and behavior that are siloed in these devices and services that mediate them,” CDT officials wrote. “Cross-device tracking allows marketers to combine these streams by linking them to the same individual, enhancing the granularity of what they know about that person.”
Companies such as SilverPush, Drawbridge, and Flurry are currently working on ways to pair a given user to particular devices. Adobe is also developing cross-device tracking technologies, although it is unclear of whether or not they will involve inaudible sound.
The CDT reported that cross-device tracking has been used by more than a dozen marketing companies and the technology makes it possible for marketers to put together a snapshot of the person being tracked.
“For example, a company could see that a user searched for sexually transmitted disease (STD) symptoms on her personal computer, looked up directions to a Planned Parenthood on her phone, visits a pharmacy, then returned to her apartment,” the CDT stated. “While previously the various components of this journey would be scattered among several services, cross-device tracking allows companies to infer that the user received treatment for an STD. The combination of information across devices not only creates serious privacy concerns, but also allows for companies to make incorrect and possibly harmful assumptions about individuals.”
As companies like SilverPush and Adobe adopt this technology, it will probably remain in use in some form, but what’s scariest is that there is no way for average people to know if they’re being tracked by it and how to opt out.
Source: Ars Technica
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