That phone game can track your TV choices

At first glance, the gaming apps — with names like “Pool 3D,” “Beer Pong: Trickshot” and “Real Bowling Strike 10 Pin” — seem innocuous.

Yet these apps, once downloaded onto a smartphone, have the ability to keep tabs on the viewing habits of their users even when the games are not being played.

It is yet another example of how companies, using devices that many people feel they cannot do without, are documenting how audiences in a rapidly changing entertainment landscape are viewing television and commercials.

The apps use software from Alphonso, a startup that collects TVviewing data for advertisers.

Using a smartphone’s microphone, Alphonso’s software can detail what people watch by identifying audio signals in TV ads and shows, sometimes even matching that information with the places people visit and the movies they see.

The information can then be used to target ads more precisely and to try to analyze things like which ads prompted a person to go to a car dealership.

More than 250 games that use Alphonso software are available in the Google Play store. Some are also available in Apple’s app store.

Alphonso said its software, which does not record human speech, is clearly explained in app descriptions and privacy policies and the company cannot gain access to users’ microphones and locations unless they agree.

“The consumer is opting in knowingly and can opt out any time,” Ashish Chordia, Alphonso’s chief executive, said, adding the company’s disclosures comply with Federal Trade Commission guidelines.