The ad pitch said your phone was listening. It wasn’t.

On 27 August 2026, the US Federal Trade Commission finalised orders against CMG Media Corporation, which does business as Cox Media Group, and two firms that worked with it, MindSift and 1010 Digital Works. The FTC alleged the companies told business customers that an AI-powered “Active Listening” service could target local ads using conversations picked up by consumers’ smart devices, and that consumers had agreed to it.

According to the FTC, the service did not use voice data and consumers had not opted in. The partner firms were also charged with giving Cox Media Group the means to deceive, through marketing materials, sales pitches and answers to customers’ questions. Cox Media Group pays $880,000 and each partner $25,000, a total of $930,000 for refunds to affected customers. The orders bar all three from misrepresenting what their advertising services can do, how they collect and use voice data and whether consumers consented.

Selling the fear as a feature

The people deceived here were the businesses buying ads. But the pitch worked because it matched a widespread fear: that phones and speakers listen in to sell things. An ad industry that markets surveillance as a premium feature, whether or not it can deliver it, erodes trust in every device in the home.

The orders settle the FTC’s charges; they are not a court finding, and the case concerns what these firms claimed, not proof that devices never record. What they do establish is that inventing consent is not a marketing flourish: claiming people had opted in when they had not is its own deception.

What to do

You can check rather than guess. On iPhone, App Privacy Report shows which apps used the microphone in the past week; on Android, the privacy dashboard does the same. Remove microphone access from apps that do not need it, and turn off voice assistants you do not use. If a business sells you a service built on consumers’ data, ask to see how that consent was collected.