Your VoIP Calls Are Being Tapped
- September 24th, 2007
- 3 Comments
There are only so many ways you can avoid advertisements online these days, but that’s about to change if you’re a VoIP user. Silicon Valley-based The Pudding is implementing an ad structure that’s similar to that of Gmail using speech recognition software that listens in on your conversation and picks out key words that will trigger relevant ads to show up in your web browser. Tests revealed call quality wasn’t affected by the process, which is run on the servers in Fremont, CA.
That’s so utterly annoying, but phone calls within the US and Canada are free and the public trial begins today. Numbers are inputted on the site, which is where the advertisements will appear. It sounds rather obnoxious, but you always have the option to minimize the browser and still get free phone calls unless they’ve concocted some black magic that doesn’t allow you to do that during a call. The Pudding wants to take this to mobile phones in which case I should probably brush up on my smoke signal skills.
The Pudding [via AP]
Charlie (Who am I?)
1 year ago
Hmm…. wondering what kind of ad would come up while arguing with the GF. Counseling or some 900 #.
John Dowdell (Who am I?)
1 year ago
I think your headline is inaccurately alarming. Pudding seems to be offering a service, like Gmail, which delivers ads based on the content you generate. It’s voice instead of text
It’s a contractual agreement, and I see no indication that they’re “eavesdropping” or “tapping” voice in general. Did you see any evidence otherwise?
(Me, I try to avoid all Google services so I can avoid all Google cookies. Techmeme’s up in arms — in unison — on this story today, but I don’t yet see a coherent understanding there of the privacy and tracking issues involved. Such false alarms as the Pudding story seem to make actual privacy concerns more difficult to communicate.)
John Dowdell (Who am I?)
1 year ago
If comments here are under moderation, then it might be good to advise on this upfront, before people invest time in typing comments which may or may not appear…..