Smartphone: Progress, or Tech Invasion of Person

Smartphone Progress, or Tech Invasion of Person

Within the last half decade, we have witnessed the rise in a new era where smartphone ownership has become “the norm”; however, what you may not be aware of is how “involved” your smartphone can actually get in to our everyday life.

What I speak of, is a generation of mobile application or “mobile app” that record and transmit ambient sound data directly from your smartphone’s microphone to company databases, gathering audio information from your daily lives whether you’re at a business meeting or just at home watching TV.

From grocery shopping to family outings and everything in between, your mobile device can now gather the sounds emitted by your surroundings and store them for research, reportedly allowing companies to narrow the scope for better marketing technique. The first apps to be brought into public attention regarding such practices Color, Shopkick, & IntoNow; all operate by activating the microphone in your iPhone or Android mobile devices and recording any information that is of relevance to a specified user.

The Color app uses your microphone in combination with the camera to “paint a picture” of your physical surroundings and interactions with others creating a temporary social network of data for use in comparison to other data retrieved. As for Shopkick, it uses information gathered by inaudible sounds generated by special devices within participating major retailer stores to award users who have even just walked into the store, with no direct action required by the user.

IntoNow, an iOS app listens specifically for when you are watching television, the company claims 2.6 million “TV broadcast airings” within its databases. It goes without saying that the ability to look into our daily lives by unrequested parties, is disturbing to stay the least, the companies behind such apps attempt to address user concern by declaring that actual sounds aren’t collected, rather the “patterns” produced by the sounds themselves, to be compared with “patterns” from other sounds.

Apps with the ability to “listen” are by no means a new emergence within mobile technology. Shazam and SoundHound are apps that can listen to and identify music that is playing around you within seconds, or the HappyWakeUp alarm clock app which monitors how you are sleeping, tossing, turning, etc. to determine if you are comfortably ready to wake up at the specified time or not. When it comes to life application such as these, use of a mobile device’s microphone is perfectly understandable; however the newer apps seem to be more secretive about their exact functions, many who use the Color app are not even aware that their microphone is being activated at all.

Marketing is directly related to consumer interest, now information from our everyday lives will aid in better targeted marketing from companies. Mobile phones have become more than just a convenient solution to communication between one another, now users are transmitting specific details about who they are, what they do, and where they do it, to company databases.

The information gathered from your day to day life is marketing gold, the more distributors know about how you live your life, the better they can predict what you will spend money on. If it can be accessed and is of any significance whatsoever, it is most certainly documented.

Your age, your gender, the gender of those you socialize with, your sleep patterns, what you watch on television and listen to on the radio, how much time you spend alone or amongst others and so forth, can and will be obtained by these “listening” apps. The future of cell phone technology is here and will continue to develop, but when, if ever, will we as the consumer say corporate access into our lives has overstepped its bounds? We should keep in mind that you are never be alone when you own a smartphone.