Could airlines spy on us through in-flight entertainment systems?

[Gold Member]

They could grab an image of the PAX using the seat and match it with other images taken of the same PAX when on other flights. If they don't match this may be a case of FF membership sharing.

Over the years I’ve occasionally asked the CSM on different airlines and aircraft if it’s a camera and whether or not they’re aware of it working or going back with video feed or stills to HO etc. On all occasions none of them even realized a camera was present in their IFE, despite it being pretty obvious.

‘A friend of mine’ may have to be a little more cautious now before he or she lets others use their FFP status on domestic flights to build and maintain.

 

[JohnK]

Take a look here and here if you want to learn more about the place that is furthest down this path.

Yes and we asked for this to happen.

Smartphones have been a nice distraction from what's going on around us. They could not have planned it any better.

 

[33kft]

Seems like an overly expensive way to spy on pax if that were the case, would only take a few ceiling mounted HD cameras to monitor all of the sardines in Y, and nobody would remark on those. I think we all just want to uncover that big conspiracy against us.

 

[Hvr]

A more likely is a scenario where your data is stolen via USB charging:


With USB-C, even plugging in can set you up to be hacked

But some attackers are finding a weakness in phone charging. Many newer phones use the same port – one of several types of USB – for both connecting to a computer and charging. A charger could be modified to attack your phone via that trusted connection. This has led some researchers to recommend never using public USB chargers for your smartphone.

 

[Deleted member 29185]

Well I'm totally stuffed! I have a Huawei phone, which is also USB-C along with a laptop which only has USB-C and I don't tape my devices cameras. Somewhere in the world, there is a dark suited spy poking toothpicks in their eyeballs to distract themselves from the tortuous monotony of my life.

 

[jb747]

There are cameras that watch the access routes to the coughpit. They are not recorded.

I find it an amazing conceit for pax to think they’d be interesting enough for the airlines to spy on!

 

[RooFlyer]

There are cameras that watch the access routes to the coughpit. They are not recorded.

I find it an amazing conceit for pax to think they’d be interesting enough for the airlines to spy on!

Maybe, but Facebook, Google etc have made $billions for their founders and shareholders on the basis of collecting inane data from their users and monetising that data.

While I don't believe these cameras are active ( see posts above) I wouldn't put it past some company to approach some airline and say " hey you've got these cameras, we'll pay you if we can 'sample' some vision from them. Anonymously of course!"

 

[harvyk]

I believe the airlines, I suspect the cameras are there because it's a feature not enabled, and it is often cheaper to simply leave unused electronics in things than redesign them to remove it.

There is perhaps an argument about "what if someone hacked the system" but I see that as different, what value would an airline truly get by monitoring the pax at that level? The airline already has your real name, age, and thanks to co-branded credit cards and frequent flyer points earning they also know how rich you actually are and what you like to spend your money on. What you thought FF points from shopping and credit cards are "free"? They are potentially the most expensive thing you'll ever do, those offers for toasters are no accident.. They don't need to collect additional data to see that you spent 2 minutes looking out the window whilst the movie was playing, they already know everything about you.

During the flight itself I know that they record IFE views by individual pax, but that's more about getting stat's on which movies are popular so they only pay licensing costs for things which are likely to be watched, and no doubt they track how popular the chicken was compared to the fish for the same reason.

As for USB chargers being more than they are, that's a pretty old hack (in IT terms, ironically the attack was first used at a hacking convention, aka the place where you'd think the attendees would know better than to fall victim). A good number of charge cables these days don't even hook the usb data pins up for this very reason.