The files we are all amassing contain everything:
A chap in Chicago is suing headphone maker Bose after discovering how much personal information its app was phoning home to base – this slurped data includes songs listened to, for how long, and when.
The class-action lawsuit, filed Tuesday in the US district court of Illinois by a one Kyle Zak, claims the Bose Connect application, available for iOS and Android, breaks federal wiretap laws, local wiretapping statute and fraud laws, and carries out “intrusion on seclusion,” which is also a crime in the state.
Intrusion on seclusion? Interesante.
Court documents [PDF] state Zak bought himself a pair of $350 (£275) Bose QuietComfort 15 wireless headphones in March, and downloaded the Bose Connect smartphone app that allows the user to control their fancy cans from their mobe.
However, he was shocked to learn that Bose’s app collects data on what kind of songs he was listening to, and for how long, along with a personal identifier code. The lawsuit says these records are routed to a data mining firm called Segment.io which advertises that it can “collect all of your customer data and send it anywhere.” Zak isn’t sure what happens to the gobbled-up information, although argues it is “valuable” to Bose… you need to have both GPS and Bluetooth turned on to use it… It also says that it shares anonymized data with third parties, in a section headed: “How we share information with Third Parties.”
If it doesn’t already exist, I am sure at some point a government agency will emerge that has the sole purpose of purchasing all of this private sector data and creating the master files for everyone. Imagine, right here is a private sector system that would allow real time tracking of everyone by GPS. How much do you think a high end PI firm would pay for that ability? A wife wants to know where her husband is in the middle of the day/ All she has to do is cut a check and a PI firm could check the database and tell her his cell phone and headphones were at the liquor store at 12:00, after which they headed to the hourly motor in on Lamont street, as did his hot little secretary’s cell phone and headphones. Have a business and want to know where a competitor is sourcing his products? Hire the firm and cut the check, and you can have his daily movements for weeks delivered to your inbox.
No word on whether the app has the ability to use the speakers as microphones to convert ambient sound around them into a listenable feed, but it wouldn’t surprise me, and I bet the privacy agreement could be construed as allowing that “data” to be sent to third parties as well. It could even be pulling other data off the user’s phone, from social media account intel to banking info, to contacts and phone calls. This software could have been outsourced to anyone, even Indian or Chinese firms, and who knows what backdoors they would put in it.
Do you wonder why Gene Hackman in Enemy of the State drove 1070s cars, and lived a technology-free life outside his electronic bubble? It is a jungle out there, and nobody even knows.
Tell everyone about r/K Theory, because they are listening anyway
[…] Bose Headphones Are Spying On You […]
You can be annoyed at Bose for joining the fun, but everybody is already doing it so they wanted in on the revenue stream. Odds are every song the guy was listening to was streamed, meaning the service knows every song listened to, and the streaming app also collects location info. Or if local files, the default Android and iOS music apps probably do likewise and report to Google or Apple. The cell carriers have been tracking every handset with at least 200m spatial resolution and sampled once per minute since 2G service was introduced. Better if the GPS is enabled of course. Time to face reality, we are all lojacked and we pay a monthly fee for the privilege.
Oh, and the Bose Quiet Comfort is noise canceling so it has a microphone on each cup. Assuming it also doesn’t feature a third mic to allow it to work as a phone handset and be able to make calls over it.
And you can’t get rid of your phone, good luck finding a pay phone these days.
“as did his hot little secretary’s cell phone and headphones.”
Make sure to zap your hot little secretary before use.
Now I have an idea, what about creating DIY kits for assembling electronics based devices that have a tendency to be compromised by manufacturers? I love using macs, I dont like the fact that my laptop is chock full of companents that report to outsiders.
We live in an age where 3d printers allow users to make a mockery of gun laws. The technology used against us is the same thing we can leverage to protect ourselves. You mentioned 1970s cars, well I have an knteresting question – why are we not putting together our own cars? Why are we still using dated means of assembly in an age where all the tools are available to have far more control over the process?
Ive assumed that at some point a company would open up which would take modern cars, strip out the computers and antennas, and rebuild them with mechanical linkages.
Note that is was the APP and not the physical headphones themselves. Quit your fucking “smart” phone already, people.