scarily… They don’t need to to be this creepy, but even I’m a tad baffled by this.
Yesterday me and a few friends were at a pub quiz, of course no phones allowed, so none were used.
It came down to a tie break question of my team and another. “What is the run time of the Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the ring” according to IMDb.
We answered and went about our day. Today my friend from my team messaged me - top post on his “today feed” is an article published 23 hours ago…
Forgive the pointless red circle… I didnt take the screenshot.
My friend isn’t a privacy conscience person by any means, but he didnt open IMDb or google anything to do with the franchise and hasn’t for many months prior. I’m aware its most likely an incredible coincidence, but when stuff like this happens I can easily understand why many people are convinced everyone’s doom brick is listening to them…
Phones abaolutely do listen, but not to audio via the mic. When Apple and Google tell you they respect your privacy, they mean they don’t harvest data directly from a live feed of the mic nor camera; they still scan your files in some cases, and they harvest your browsing history, and read your text messages metadata, and check your youtube watch history, and scan your contacts, and check your location, and harvest hundreds of other litttle tiny data points that don’t seem like much but add up to a big profile of you and your behavior and psyche.
So your friend was at a pub quiz with a couple dozen other people, and his phone knew where he was and who was nearby. A statistically significant portion of the people there were not privacy conscious and googled “Lord of the Rings runtime” or something similar. All that data got harvested by Google and Apple, and processed, and then the most recent and fitting entry from some master list of customers’ sites’ articles was pushed to all their newsfeeds.
Humans don’t understand intuitively how much information is being processed through nonverbal means at any given time, and that’s the disconnect large companies exploit when they say misleading things like “noooo, your phone isn’t listening to you.”
But it’s totally not privacy invasive, because at no point along the line did a human view your data (/s)
The person asking the trivia question needed to know the answer, so they could determine who was correct.
Phones, as I understand them, average about 30 pings per second. That’s 30 times per second the phone is checking for signal strength with the nearest tower, among other data.
They also work with any device that has wifi or bluetooth to help with location triangulation. So anyone at trivia that had their phone on them and powered, had their position noted as well as their proximity to others. If the location has smart TV’s on the walls, those were picking up the pings as well. If they have internet available to customers, there’s another point picking up the info.
It’s already been shown that a few companies have listened to microphones. The data being extrapolated is so large, listening to the microphone would be counterproductive and redundant. There are devices everywhere, security cameras, billboards, inside each row of shelves at your grocery store, in every car that has a computer, lights at intersections, smart watches and other IOT devices, even appliances these days have wifi and bluetooth like refridgerators, coffee pots, robot vacuums, treadmills, i could go on.
It’s scary that some company might be listening to your through your phones microphone but the real scary thing is that they don’t need to. They knew people at that trivia game would be searching for that answer before the question was even asked, without needing to listen in.
I hope they listen to me absolutely ripping ass. The idea that some corporate lackey who is noting what I say to feed me targeted ads just has his eardrums blown out by my booty thunder on a regular basis warms my heart.
Other folks in the area searched it, and bluetooth nearby as well as wifi tracking put them all in the same place. Same as old mate with the Spanish comment, he was hanging around in an area with folks who regularly look at stuff in Spanish.
What you think might be spontaneous isn’t.
Very valid point! Clearly people cheating!
What’s scary is that tracking tech is so good they don’t even need to listen to you to know what you’ve been talking/thinking about.
deleted by creator
Or just looking up the answer afterwards.
Somehow I find this much worse.
I’m an Android/Google/Pixel person. I have a Google Home speaker at work (self-employed barber/stylist) and was playing old classic country music a few weeks ago. My client mentioned that her husband’s favorite artist is Porter Wagoner and his favorite song is Cold Hard Facts Of Life. Well, guess what the very next song was? And now, ever since then, I’ve been inundated with that song. It plays constantly.
This could also be the baader-meinhof phenomenon (also known as the frequency illusion)
more than likely it was the two emails in the gmail app
I was watching a recording of Jeopardy (captured via antenna) on my private media server. This was not a recording of a recent episode. One of the answers was a band I’ve never heard of. The next day Pandora played a song by that band.
Today I decided to check with a couple of local insurance agencies to see if I could get my family’s current coverage any cheaper. I never searched for this specific topic, only for contact info to reach out to a couple of agencies. Then I made two phone calls, sent two emails via the Gmail app including my current policies declaration pages, and I received one text message from an insurance agency. Now my news stream is flooded with ads for comparing insurance rates and changing companies.
If you think your Apple phone isn’t listening to you, I have some seaside real estate I’d like to sell you in Montana.
Again, not my device personally
I mean, I know everyone says it’s impossible for phones to be listening, but I feel like there are just too many examples for that to be the case. My friend was looking for something for our other friends birthday. Her husband suggested opening instagram and talking about the thing she was looking for, describing the specific jacket, saying the company started with an “A.” Minutes later, she got the ad for the jacket she was looking for.
When I was driving with some people from work, we were talking about daddy Yankee, and his song “gasolina.” We were using maps to navigate home from an away job. On our route, suddenly there were multiple waypoints suggested on our map, “estaciones de gasolina.” We were speaking English, the person whose phone it was doesn’t speak Spanish.
If they’re not listening, how could these things be possible?
wasn’t there a thing recently where it became clear they do listen?
My fairphone even SHOWED me the mic was running, in the top banner. Sure enough, google had accessed my mic that minute, clearly stated in the settings. I’ve turned it off since, but I don’t trust that. I’ll have to get around to switching to calyx.
I hadnt heard of this if so
No no, they listen. How do you think the “Hey Google” feature works? It has to listen for the key phrase. Might as well just listen to everything else.
I spent some time with a friend and his mother and spoke in Spanish for about two hours while YouTube was playing music. I had Spanish ads for 2 weeks after that.
Prove your extraordinary claim.
yes, they listen to everything
Phones are spyware by definition
Phones absolutely listen. But they probably process the speech locally, unless there’s a trigger word flagged, and send mostly text.
But then it was found Google would upload the audio when a zipper sound was heard, so who knows how often your triggering spy conditions.
One day I had my phone charging on the same table I was measuring a liquid from two glass dropper bottles. The phone heard me shaking the bottles, clinking the glass pipettes, and dropping the liquid into water. I’ve never ever talked about dropper bottles as I didn’t know what they are called before this incident. I had bought the liquids with their bottles about a month before, and I’ve only ever referred to them by the brand name of the liquid.
My Quora feed 20 minutes later:
“What are the advantages of using dropper bottles in chemical processes?”
I am convinced they do listen. I have had 2 instances og this. Once I was talking with my mom about some new bedsheets and covers. She later went to the store and sent me a picture to see if it’s okay. I later got an add for the exact same bedsheets and covers.
Had another similar thing when I got an add for some stuff we were just talking about with some people. Cannot remember what specifically.
Removed by mod
Google does listen, what do you mean? They have a feature in form of their voice assistant to make sure it can
Yes I’m aware they have the feature but as others stated, listening 24/7 would require enormous levels of compute power that even google wouldnt see as economical
Phones listen but not on the way you think, I’d say they just listen for keywords the same way it listens for “hey Google” also who knows maybe he searched it beforehand or is a fan
If you are worried about it then do something about it there are alot of things you can do to improve your privacy. If that’s not the case then forget it
You can’t with an OS full controlled by Google or Apple. You can only alleviate the problem, using alternatives, such as LinageOS, Ubuntu Mobile, de-googled Android or another distro, but only if you have root access. https://www.pcmag.com/picks/break-away-from-android-ios-7-free-open-source-mobile-oses-to-try
As I stated, not my phone, I dont get this stuff happen to me personally
