Free phone service would surely seem too good to be true to college students constantly tied to their cellphones, but that’s exactly what one company is offering — with an interesting tradeoff that has raised concern about caller privacy.
ThePudding.com allows users to make free phone calls through the Internet, but it uses a voice-recognition system that listens in to conversations and identifies key words that trigger advertisements on screen that directly correlate to dialogue.
Eran Arbel, ThePudding media vice president of products, said the communication system will not invade users’ privacy because it does log any information about the conversations.
“I don’t want [Internet companies] to know about me,” Arbel said. “We never make records and we don’t expose or share. . . Even if there was a subpoena, we wouldn’t be able to provide [any information].”
Arbel said opponents “blow things out of proportion” when criticizing the company for intrusion of privacy.
“Younger people are open to new ideas,” he said. “I think the younger generation is more receptive.”
Arbel added the company hopes the product, which is geared toward young adults, will expand to include free mobile coverage with major cellular networks like Verizon Wireless and AT’T after fully launching in 2008.
Though Arbel said calls are not logged or recorded and users’ identifications are kept confidential, critics say the technology fosters a false sense of security for a younger generation already comfortable with releasing private information over the Internet.
“It’s another step toward a world where people are comfortable giving up their privacy rights,” said Melissa Ngo, senior counsel and director of ID and Surveillance Projects at the Electronic Privacy Info Center. “If this is what they do now, what will they do in the future? They can change the terms of service.
“I think there’s a growing change in the definition of privacy,” Ngo continued. “An older generation would say privacy is no one knowing information about you. [Today’s generation] wants to control dissemination of their info. In this day and age with the Internet, there’s no way to protect your info from being disseminated when it’s put out there.”
Though the technology is free of charge, Ngo said users pay in their loss or privacy.
“Nothing is free,” she said. “There’s something else [the company] is getting from you that’s worth more than the $5 or $10 from your phone call.”
Boston University law professor Trace Maclin said the service represents a shift in culture across age groups.
“If [ThePudding Media is] telling people all the implications and the people understand and they go ahead and release this info, that suggests that whoever is using this technology isn’t as concerned about privacy as much as a generation or two ago,” Maclin said.
If the company ever did record logs of conversations, those records would be fair game for government seizure, Maclin said.
“The government could easily come and subpoena the information,” he said. “The government would have access to that information. Do you have a privacy claim? A very good argument is that you don’t.”
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