Facebook Is Patenting Technology to Spy on You Through Your Smartphone

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Sahil Chinoy, a graphics editor for The New York Times, recently reviewed hundreds of Facebook's patent applications and appropriately dubbed many of them "creepy." Here are four of the creepiest:

1. A patent for using your device's front facing camera to read your facial expressions and determine how you feel about what you see on the screen.

2. A patent for using your phone's microphone to eavesdrop on you, determining which television programs you're watching and whether the ads are muted. It would also use the electrical signals emitted by your television to identify programs.

3. A patent that would track your weekly routine. It might also use your phone's location in the middle of the night to try to determine where you live (or at least sleep).

4. A patent that would use your posts and messages--and credit card transactions--to predict your major life events, such as a birth, marriage, graduation, or death. Advertisers particularly value knowing when such events might occur soon.

Does all this make the little hairs on the back of your neck stand on end? Not to worry, says Facebook VP Allen Lo, head of intellectual property. "Most of the technology outlined in these patents has not been included in any of our products, and never will be," he told the Times in an email.

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