Though each app clearly requests microphone access to monitor what TV shows and ads a player is watching, there are naturally concerns about both the practice itself and the chance that these apps could be gathering information from children.<\/p>\n
The company notes that software doesn\u2019t record human speech. Rather, it uses a device\u2019s microphone to listen to and identify audio signals in TV shows and advertisements. That information is then reported back to advertisers and used to more accurately target users with ads or analyze which ads prompted certain behaviors.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Alphonso\u2019s CEO Ashish Chordia tells the New York Times<\/a> that players are prompted with an in-app dialogue box to request access to a device\u2019s microphone and that they are able to opt out at any point in time following that agreement. He notes that the company doesn\u2019t support the use of the software in apps aimed at kids, but The New York Times reports that it still discovered several children\u2019s apps that use Alphonso on the Google Play Store.<\/p>\n While Chordia notes that Alphonso\u2019s disclosures are fully compliant with Federal Trade Commission guidelines, it is worth mentioning that the FTC has gone after developers for similar practices in the past. The FTC issued warnings<\/a> to developers using framework from Silverpush in the past to monitor TV viewing habits in a similar manner, though Alphonso\u2019s disclosures are notably more detailed than the Silverpush requests had been.<\/p>\n But the use of Alphonso\u2019s tech inside games geared at children could land some developers in hot water. Just within the last year, developers and companies like Disney, Unity,<\/a> Sybo, and Kiloo<\/a> have come under fire for violating the Children\u2019s Online Privacy Protection Act by collecting and using personal data from children without parental consent.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A number of mobile games and apps now use a smart device\u2019s microphone to track the shows or advertisements its players see on TV. The start-up Alphonso is behind the tech which the New York Times reports now allows more than 250 games on the Google Play Store (and some on Apple’s App Store) to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9132,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.sickgamedev.win\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/12\/some-mobile-games-now-report-tv-viewing-habits-back-to-advertisers.jpg\")
<\/p>\n