India-Based Zapr Has Developed Tech That Listens To Ambient Sounds Around Users To Build Targeted Ad Profiles, Several Popular Local Services Use Its Tech

Bengaluru-based Zapr Media Labs, which counts Rupert Murdoch-led media group Star and several major local companies including Flipkart (which is now owned by Walmart), music streaming service Saavn, handset maker Micromax as its investors, has developed a tech that listens to ambient sounds around users to build targeted advertising profiles of them, reports news outlet FactorDaily. Zapr does this by using the microphone on the smartphone. Several major services in the country including Chota Bheem games to Dainik Bhaskar (a news outlet) to, likely, even Hotstar (a hugely popular streaming service which launched its service in the US and Canada last year, and which as you may recall, set a global record for most simultaneous views earlier this year) have embedded Zapr's technology into their apps. FactorDaily reports that most of these services are not forthcoming to their customers about what kind of monitoring they are doing. An excerpt from the report: One of the apps that inspired Zapr's founding team was the popular music detection and identification app Shazam. But, its three co-founders saw opportunity in going further. "Instead of detecting music, can we detect all kinds of medium? Can we detect television? Can we detect movies in a theatre? Can we detect video on demand? Can we really build a profile for a user about their media consumption habits... and that really became the idea, the vision we wanted to solve for," Sandipan Mondal, CEO of Zapr Media Labs, said in an interview last week on Thursday.

Shorn of jargon, the underlying Zapr tech listens to ambient sounds around you, analyses it, and profiles users based on their media consumption habits. "That data would be very useful in order to recommend the right kind of content and also for brands and advertisers to hopefully reduce the wastage and inefficiencies and make smarter decisions," said Mondal, who co-founded the company in 2012 along with his batchmates from Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad (batch of 2010) Deepak Baid and Sajo Mathews.

Zapr claims to have the largest media consumption analytics database in India and helps television channels and brands to earn a better bang for their advertising buck. To be sure, advertising -- even with the internet's promise of better targeting -- still is an inaccurate business with proxies, at best, helping measure its return on investment. But, Zapr's tech comes with privacy and data concerns -- lots of it.

Clippy: It sounds like you need a Trojan

[goombah99]

Do you need some help with that?

only me

[AndyKron]

The only control I have over this is to not have a smartphone. I wish someone who did have control over this would put a stop to it.

Re:

[olsmeister]

Pop open the phone and clip the wires going to the microphone. Problem solved!

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

The only control I have over this is to not have a smartphone.

That is not the only control you have. You also have the ability to not download and install apps that access your microphone.

If you install an app that uses the microphone, then read the fine print so you understand why it needs that access, and what it is doing with the data.

I wish someone who did have control over this would put a stop to it.

Look in the mirror. You will see the person who has control.

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Bill, word has it that you don't even have to download any apps, it's either baked right into the firmware of the phone, or you get surveillance software push-installed silently, with it running silently in the background. Your phone could be listening to you right now and you'd never know it, no way to tell. Don't tell me I'm paranoid, either, it's all been documented, and don't tell me you're not worth surveilling, because that's not the point. The only way to be sure you win this game is to not play.

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

Bill, word has it that you don't even have to download any apps

That is not what TFA says.

Do you have evidence whatsoever that this capability is "baked right into the firmware"?

Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[rsilvergun]

hasn't pre installed them and flagged them as system apps you can't uninstall. I guess you can spend days researching, buy the phone, search through all the apps to check if they've got it.

Oh, and don't forget to check each and every app update on your phone, since apps update automatically. You'll have to disable that and check each app, but you'll want to update them since otherwise you'll get nailed by security issues.

Re:

[Aighearach]

Apps do not update automatically. They update at the behest of the Master if the user has entered Slave Mode and checked that box. If you uncheck the box, apps update when the user updates them.

Re: Assuming your carrier or cell phone vendor

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. I've had installing or updating apps set to manual yet have caught "system apps" like play store itself updating without any user action. Other things like Google services network and one other I can't remember cause it's not even got a name on play it was some com.blah sub app attached to services

Re:

[ShanghaiBill]

There is no evidence whatsoever that this capability is preinstalled by the vendor.

If they did that, it would be highly illegal in many jurisdictions, there would be hundreds of people involved in this illegal activity, and it would be a complete disaster for the vendor when (not if) it leaked. So how long would it take to leak? Less than 24 hours, since anyone with a voltmeter could detect the microphone turning on.

Re:

[93 Escort Wagon]

iOS lets you control access to the microphone, on a per-app basis, at the time the app tries to access the mic. I believe recent versions of Android offer that same level of control.

It’s annoying that you have to do this, but you can “just say no”.

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Unless it's a hardware switch that's literally wired between the microphone and the rest of the phone, you can't count on it doing what it says it does.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

Uh, no, you clearly don't have any idea how electronics works.
The amplifer between the chipset that generates the audio and the speaker(s) is not bi-directional; it can only amplify an input signal and feed that to the speaker(s), not the other way around. Or are you being sarcastic?

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

No, you still don't understand, and you clearly don't understand that article either. Go learn some basic electronics then get back to me, stop trying to get your electronics 'education' from shitty articles written by people who don't understand electronics either.

Re:

[Rick Schumann]

So get rid of your smartphone. You've been indoctrinated to believe that you cannot live without one, but that's complete and utter bullshit. I do not have a smartphone, never have, never will, and I live life just as fully as anyone else. Cheap clamshell phone for the win!

Think about it: do you really need to play games, surf the web, watch movies, or any of the other crap you do with your smartphone other than make and receive calls and text messages? No, you do not, you WANT to do those things, but yo

Not gonna work

[mrops]

I still keep getting these p__is enlargement adverts, and I don't even own a smartphone, only my girlfriend.

Re:

[Aighearach]

It is an exceptionally small sacrifice, just carry a dumb phone and some other type of computer assistant, like a wifi tablet. And only install apps that are tools. And don't grant a single excess permission.

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Anti stalking laws.

[Fly Swatter]

If they follow you everywhere you go and log what you are doing, shouldn't these old laws eventually start to apply? Yea I know; don't buy such a device, because these things are so easy to avoid. That fellow citizen standing next to you probably has one even if you don't, not to forget all the cameras watching you everywhere...