Your apps may be eavesdropping on you, and the Federal Trade Commission wants them to stop.
The US’s trade watchdog issued warning letters to 12 app developers with 15 apps in the Google Play store for spying on unwitting users, asking them to disclose to customers that they are being tracked, FTC senior attorney Kristin Cohen confirmed to Motherboard. The Commission is not currently disclosing which developers or which apps were targeted with warning letters, Cohen said.
At issue is the use of software called SilverPush, which contains a unique “audio beacon” and commandeers a device’s microphone to listen in for ambient sounds, inaudible to human ears, that advertisers embed into TV commercials or web ads
