One, however, was found to be taking measurements from audio signals even when the mic was supposedly off. The researchers found that all of these apps had the ability to capture audio when the mic is muted but most did not take advantage of this capability. "One app transmits statistics of the audio to its telemetry servers while the app is muted."Īmong the apps studied – Zoom (Enterprise), Slack, Microsoft Teams/Skype, Cisco Webex, Google Meet, BlueJeans, WhereBy, GoToMeeting, Jitsi Meet, and Discord – most presented only limited or theoretical privacy concerns. "We find fragmented policies for dealing with microphone data among VCAs - some continuously monitor the microphone input during mute, and others do so periodically," the authors explain in their paper. One app transmits statistics of the audio to its telemetry servers while the app is muted While operating-system-level controls, via control panels, can disable mics – an issue smart speaker hardware has addressed with a physical off button for the mic – app-based mute buttons in native apps don't behave the way most people expect. The software-based mute buttons, they say, are app-dependent and seldom provide a visible indicator when the associated mic is capturing audio. In operating systems like macOS and Windows, disabling the camera in an app relies on an operating-system-level control that turns the camera off completely and provides visual confirmation that the camera is inactive by the absence of a blinking light. The problem, the academics say, is that video and audio signals don't get handled in a consistent manner.
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