'Creepy' Facebook Feature Listens to Your Activity

Facebook is facing a serious backlash over a new feature that allows it to listen in on its smartphone users. When activated, the feature uses the device's microphone to detect a user's activity and automatically updates their "status" accordingly.

For example, if a user is listening to a new U2 album on their stereo in the background, Facebook will use a smartphone's microphone to update a user's status to "Listening to U2". It can also detect movies and television shows and update a user's status to read "Watching Iron Man" or "Watching Mad Men".

According to Facebook, the feature is only activated when a user is composing a status update.

Facebook Microphone Listening Feature "Downright Creepy"

This isn't the first application to use a smartphone's microphone to identify media. Shazam, an app that was released more than a decade ago, uses a microphone to show a user the artist, song title, and album of a detected song.

That said, Facebook's listening feature takes things a step further by updating a user's profile status automatically. That has led thousands of users to slam the new feature as "creepy" and a "Big Brother move". (Source: com.au)

Some users were so upset that they started an online petition in hopes of convincing Facebook to kill the feature. "Facebook says the feature will be used for harmless things, like identifying the song or TV show playing in the background, but by using the phone's microphone every time you write a status update, it has the ability to listen to everything," the petition reads.

"Not only is this move just downright creepy, it's also a massive threat to our privacy. The feature is opt-in, but many won't even read the warnings. If we act now, we can stop Facebook in its tracks before it has a chance to release the feature."

Those behind the petition are seeking 750,000 signatures. As of this past Monday midday, they were closing in on 600,000. (Source: sumofus.org)

Eavesdropping Information Anonymized, Facebook Insists

For its part, Facebook says it's easy to opt out of the program, thereby ensuring that users' information is not linked to their accounts.

"If you don't choose to post and the feature detects a match, we don't store match information except in an anonymized form that is not associated with you ... We turn the audio it hears into a code -- code that is not reversible into audio -- and then we match it against a database of code," noted Facebook spokesperson Momo Zhou.

Although the feature is clearly unpopular with a large segment of Facebook's user base, experts suggest it could prove very lucrative in attracting marketers and driving up Facebook's advertising revenue. (Source: news.com.au)

What's Your Opinion?

Do you think that the Facebook microphone listening feature is too intrusive, as the petition suggests? Or do you think concerned Facebook users should just shut the feature off and forget about it? Would you ever use or want this kind of feature on your smartphone?