Route Fifty: Masking the Audio Our Devices Hear Is the Best Way To Fight Digital Eavesdropping

Published by Mike Fong on August 1, 2019

Thanks in no small part to a barrage of news stories about smartphone spyware and misbehaving smart devices, there’s a growing awareness that the cameras and microphones in our digital companions can be hijacked by sophisticated threat actors to remotely spy and eavesdrop on users. But while it’s relatively straightforward for users of these devices to prevent illicit image capture by blocking built-in cameras, the complexities associated with blocking sound preclude a simple equivalent for microphones. To solve this gap in protection, sophisticated products have started to emerge that add noise near a device’s microphones to mask sound in vicinity of the device.