Has your phone ever listened to you?

The Young Wan

Friend and I were having coffee one day and talking about how we both wanted to go to Hungary for their dental tourism.

I go home, go on Facebook a couple hours later, low and behold there's a lot of ads for dentists in Hungary.

Rubberlegs

I was talking on my phone to my sister about needing to get something fixed on my car. An ad for a mechanic showed up on Boards minutes later. Several people I know have had similar experiences.

Kimbot

Yep, sure you give plenty of apps permission to use the microphone on your phone so it stores a good bit of audio from what I understand.

Riesen_Meal

People who accept terms and conditions of apps and updates and are shocked when they don't read them, the nerve of Google/FB/Amazon etc...

BrokenArrows

The Young Wan wrote: »

Friend and I were having coffee one day and talking about how we both wanted to go to Hungary for their dental tourism.

I go home, go on Facebook a couple hours later, low and behold there's a lot of ads for dentists in Hungary.

Yes it happens a lot.

marcbrophy

No, it's never happened to me.
But whereas before, I was certain it was a coincidence, now I'm thinking it might be happening to others, but not to me as I have ad personalisation turned off.

Also, I have mostly trained my brain to ignore ads, on the few things that I cannot block them on, so maybe they were there, but I didn't notice them

i71jskz5xu42pb

People often confuse anecdotal evidence with evidence.
Despite all the anecdotes we've never seen (to my knowledge):

• Any credible study of this that recreates these anecdotes under lab conditions
• Any ex-facebook employee involved in what has to be a massive project spill the beans. (Facebook may be keeping these employees in the same place NASA keeps the thousands of people that faked the moon landing).

Anteayer

It looks like the GDPR fines will plug any hole in the EU budget, given how these companies seem to just contemptuously ignore it.

Good jib!

Fieldog wrote: »

People who accept terms and conditions of apps and updates and are shocked when they don't read them, the nerve of Google/FB/Amazon etc...

To be honest though, the game's heavily rigged in their favour. They know that if they make people scroll through 10 pages of a legal document, no-one will do it and people will just click the 'accept' button.

Doesn't make it right though.

Timberrrrrrrr

Have been chatting with friends for the last 30 minutes about 25 year old nymphomaniac chung wans and still nothing. Must be doing it wrong

robarmstrong

My friend and I were talking about how much we hate people who leech off the social welfare (just dole-bashing in general with a bit of traveller hatred thrown in the mix) and next thing I know I got ads for a link to Boards After Hours.

PARlance

They can and do listen but they don't target ads based on listening.

You can target people in so many ways via Facebook etc but there's no "listen to what they're saying and target them if they use these keywords" option.

Ads aren't random, you'll have been targeted but just not by listening in.

Deebles McBeebles

My latest ad was for a ranch in Texas where hairy men go to be wild and free while wearing nappies. Should I be worried?

Spleerbun

Several times yep. Most recently had several people in work start talking to me about the socks I was wearing (they were the type you'd need sunglasses to look at), later that day on Facebook and getting all these ads for socks (something I have certainly never searched for or could have left a cookie trail on).

McMurphy

Me and my friend were debating whether a woman with big firm breasts was more pleasing to the eye than as woman small perky breasts.

Low and behold ten mins later I get a WhatsApp with a video that had, actually I better not describe it for fear of a ban.

Tefral

Out of curiosity OP have you been googling this in the past? If you are talking about it, theres a high chance you looked it up physically on a device.

I have had what you describe happen to me, but when i interrogate my google history, i've always visited a site where the ad came from in the past.

Happened recently. A friend was talking about his favourite car which I would have never looked up before or anything. Got home and it was YouTube recommended.

Anteayer

If you’re on an iPhone block it through the privacy settings to turn off microphone access to Facebook and any other apps you don’t like.

For Android, it’s also possible at least if you’ve Android 8 or higher

Franz Von Peppercorn

Timberrrrrrrr wrote: »

Have been chatting with friends for the last 30 minutes about 25 year old nymphomaniac chung wans and still nothing. Must be doing it wrong

Really. I get those adds all the time.

I mean I never get those adds.

spodoinkle

100%. Youtube is always throwing up recommendations of things Ive been talking about/singing. It freaks me the f"ck out.

Your Face

I talk like a mafioso when Im near my phone.
"Yeah, Ima gonna meet our friend with the hair about that thing about the boxes of ziti"

Feisar

Myself and the wife were talking about trying for a baby, hey presto all this baby stuff started coming up. I asked had she done any googling, she hadn't and neither had I.

is_that_so

Feisar wrote: »

Myself and the wife were talking about trying for a baby, hey presto all this baby stuff started coming up. I asked had she done any googling, she hadn't and neither had I.

Can you remember every single two second Google search before you got distracted by something else? If that's your current thinking you're probably drawn to related materials, through a casual click or the type of stories you read. Google tracks you everywhere as does FB on its platform.

marcbrophy

Deleted User wrote: »

Happened recently. A friend was talking about his favourite car which I would have never looked up before or anything. Got home and it was YouTube recommended.

Shít lads, the AI has created a Boards accounts and is agreeing with us!!

Pompey Magnus

2 years ago myself and my wife were driving down the country, I had Google maps giving directions on my phone and my iPod was playing a true crime podcast over the radio. During the part of the podcast where details of either a murder or suicide were being explained the voice on the maps giving directions started saying something along the lines of "If you are in distress and require police assistance press the microphone button and say 'help'"

The only thing I can assume was the phone was listening in on what was being said in the car and picked up certain key words from the podcast and played that message.

Shred

It's never happened to me. A few things though, I'm an IOS user and don't use the GMAIL app nor do I leave my GMAIL account signed in on any device I use. I'm also not a shítebook user, I bailed out of that cesspit years ago.

Del2005

My work phone is even better as it's physic. I was driving into work and saw an ad for Plant hire. When I switched on my work phone a few hours later an ad for Plant hire appeared

Anteayer

Time to move back to the old Telecom Éireann / P&T Model 500 which came in a choice of three dashing colours and high speed rotary dial with dialling wand?

ToBeFrank123

Not too worried about it at the moment, but when it gets to the stage where I think about something and 5 minutes later an ad for it appears on boards.ie, etc, then I will be impressed.

silverharp

in terms of statistics it would probably be more weird if it didn't happen at all. How many conversations have you had where your phone didn't throw up a suggestion?

circadian

I have pretty much all known trackers blocked.

This means that uploading images/attachments to WhatsApp doesn't work since it's now going through Facebook CDN. Make of that what you will but I can't see Facebook not using this information to further profile people.

Remember, you don't even need to have ever had a Facebook account, they fill in the gaps using people you know that do have Facebook accounts.

So, yeah, phones listening in is not even remotely surprising.

Scotty #

If you're on Android then yes, your phone listens to everything. That's how 'OK Google' works. If you go to this page > https://myactivity.google.com/item?restrict=vaa it will show you all your voice activity and you can even play it back. You might be surprised at some of the 'accidental' activity recorded.

B_ecke_r

Fieldog wrote: »

People who accept terms and conditions of apps and updates and are shocked when they don't read them, the nerve of Google/FB/Amazon etc...

I don't believe for a second you've read the ts and cs of every app you've downloaded or platform you've joined.

if you did, you'd still be reading.

sbsquarepants

spodoinkle wrote: »

100%. Youtube is always throwing up recommendations of things Ive been talking about/singing. It freaks me the f"ck out.

Kids are always on my phone - all I get is there's a new finger family song, or new learn your colours with playdough video:D

Neither they, their mother, the phone, nor anyone else for that matter ever seems to listen to me!

Riesen_Meal

B_ecke_r wrote: »

I don't believe for a second you've read the ts and cs of every app you've downloaded or platform you've joined.

if you did, you'd still be reading.

Did I say I did read them myself?

I just find it funny that people who moan about this kind of stuff have most likely accepted the terms and conditions that have included the whole microphone recording thing, you can disable them on later android OS versions but if you are on an old phone there isn't much of a facility to do so...

OldMrBrennan83

Mine sometimes shows me ads for things I've been talking about, which is great because if I'm going to see ads anyway then I might as well see ones of interest.

topper75

Leabhairigí as Gaeilge lads.

Fadhb réitithe.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b

Monitoring your every conversation would be illegal, so it's worth asking whether companies like Google and Facebook, which are in deep enough **** already with data regulators, would take the risks.

It's more likely that these companies are using information you've already freely given them about your age, gender, location, interests, education, friends, shopping habits, etc., to predict what ads you're likely to want to see.

In the case of the man who started seeing ads for baby products, Facebook probably knows his and his wife's age, when they got married (relationship status changed on timeline, wedding pictures, etc.), and has guessed that they may soon start trying for a baby.

It's also the case that if you've recently been discussing or thinking about something, you're more likely to notice ads for it. E.g., if you're in the market for a new car, you're far more likely to pay attention to car ads.