CMG Admits to Listening to Your Phone Conversations

Cox Media Group -CMG, admitted in a leaked pitch deck to investors that it listens to the phone conversations of potential customers to enable them to put appropriate ads on its platforms.

CMG, a marketing company, admitted to using software that monitors the microphones within potential customers’ phones. The company claims that it only does this for advertisement purposes. The software collects and analyzes data drawn from your phone conversations and online behavior patterns.

Advertisers can use the content of your phone conversations to determine your interest and bombard you with specific ads. The company has notable partners such as Google, Facebook, and Bing.

CMG is a marketing company that offers services such as digital management, website development, content creation and promotion, and branding to upcoming businesses and companies.

The company has lost its partnership with Google following this latest revelation. It is believed that the company uses this software to gain an advantage in securing deals with companies looking to advertise their products. According to Google, violations of their ad policies are promptly addressed to protect the privacy of clients.

As reported by 404 Media, the active listening software can pick up points of conversations near mobile phones whether one is making a call or not.  This means having your phone in your pocket or anywhere nearby while you engage in conversations is risky. Your privacy is violated.

Other partner companies are investigating the activities of CMG to ascertain whether they constitute policy violations. One such company is Meta.

This revelation has sparked major conversations globally. It has been revealed that most website pages that ask for user consent often include this active listening condition in the terms. This means it might not be only CMG that listens to our conversations.

But how many of us usually take the trouble to read through all those long pages when we can just click to agree to the terms to enable us to access what we want?

CMG has, however, not clarified whether it sought user consent via consent pages to listen to their phone conversations or not.

This is revelation is a wake-up call for us to vigilant about what we consent to on the internet.   It, however, also reveals legal potholes that need to be filled to protect the privacy of people using mobile phones and internet services.