That Game on Your Phone May Be Tracking What You’re Watching on TV<br />Using a smartphone’s microphone, Alphonso’s software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching<br />that information with the places people visit and the movies they see.<br />Companies gathering such data, especially through games, need to make their business practices clear to consumers “because it’s so inherently unexpected<br />and surprising,” said Justin Brookman, the director of consumer privacy and technology policy at the advocacy group Consumers Union, and a former policy director at the trade commission who worked on the Silverpush case.<br />The disparate viewing information is tied to IP addresses, which can be matched to characteristics like age, gender, income<br />and more through big data brokers like Experian without using personally identifiable information like names and addresses.<br />Alphonso declined to say how many people it is collecting data from, and Mr. Chordia said<br />that he could not disclose the names of the roughly 1,000 games and the messaging and social apps with Alphonso software because a rival was trying to hurt its relationships with developers.<br />“We have to be really careful as we have more devices capturing more information in living rooms and bedrooms and on the street and in other people’s homes<br />that the public is not blindsided and surprised by things,” said Dave Morgan, the founder and chief executive of Simulmedia, which works with advertisers on targeted TV ads.<br />“When you see ‘permission for microphone access for ads,’ it may not be clear to a user that, Oh, this means it’s going<br />to be listening to what I do all the time to see if I’m watching ‘Monday Night Football,’” Mr. Brookman said.
