I'm convinced my phone listens to me

[LadiesFinishFights]

Have absolutely no interest in marriage. Never watch any shows, google anything to do with it. Nothing.

Yesterday my friend knelt down to help me up off the floor and I said jokingly 'omg. Are you asking me to marry you!' we made a few more wedding jokes.

Last night I got 2 adverts for 'wedding gowns' and one for a local wedding venue. I've just now got an email from Pinterest helping me pick out the perfect engagement ring 😒

That's some coincidence?

It happens far too often and to far too many people for it to be coincidence!

You’re not paranoid- your phone is constantly listening to you unless you turn off the microphone I think (google it and you’ll find some articles).

I was at a baby class the other day and the girl next to me was telling me about a specific sling and a few hours later an advert for that very sling appeared on my Facebook feed.

I think it listens out for specific ‘key words’ to target adverts so things like products and brand names (and probably phrases like ‘getting married’ or ‘new car’ etc etc)

I find it incredibly weird that if I look at my phone when setting off for work in the car (usually to give it a quick charge) it tells me how long it'll take to get to work... How does it know? Its not like I use google maps to get there!

Me too! Started advertising teething mitts when I'd been talking to DM about DS not being able to hold a teething ring!!

I find it incredibly weird that if I look at my phone when setting off for work in the car (usually to give it a quick charge) it tells me how long it'll take to get to work... How does it know? Its not like I use google maps to get there!

If you have location switched on, it knows where you go
If you go the same time on the same day it learns

If you got in the car on a normal work day/time and you were going somewhere else, maybe day trip, and it knew, then that would be freaky

DP started talking to me about buying a vibrator first time ever.

2 hours later i had fb adverts about vibrators and dildos 😆

I was also talking to my son about Big Narstie because he thinks he is hilarious.

Then on FB I got serval videos in a row with BN on various shows.

If you let apps have access to the microphone, it will use that information to target things to you. There's also some cognitive bias' in play, you notice them more because you've talked about it and your brain makes the connection, so you may have seen wedding gowns and vibrators anyway, but scrolled straight past. We ignore around 85% of Facebook ads that we see each day, just scrolling past with no conscious awareness.

Definitely! Siri interrupted a perfectly harmless conversation the other day with this:

He just eavesdrops when the phone is resting somewhere, mishears everything but gets involved anyway.

I have my microphone turned off but I don’t think that’s the issue
I was thinking about something one night. THINKING
Was alone so had not spoken to anyone 100% and hadn’t googled anything remotely similar and next day I had an af for the exact thing 🤣 I felt a little sick for a min and i still can’t work out how it happened

ad

You have to actively turn off permissions for apps/your phone to listen to you with most manufacturers.

Orwell was only half right, there are listening devices data farming our lives and listening for key words but they aren't government mandated...people pay a fortune for the 'privilege' of being spied on.

Ages ago uninstalled the FB app for this reason, it seemed the worst culprit.

Brave new world!

It's happened to me before!

Secretive: that's a cognitive bias. Your brain picked up on the ad because you were thinking about it anyway, not the other way around.

For everyone else that is freaked out it will be your mike access and app settings that is doing it.

How does your phone know you said "ok Google" unless it's listening to everything you say? How does your Alexa know you've said "Alexa" unless it listens to everything? Turn off access to your microphone for all apps and the spooky shit stops.

Many of us are selling our most intimate conversations to advertisers in return for the convenience of natural language processing.

This happened to me this week, I was chatting to my mum and sister about the menopause and I started getting adverts for 'menopausal nightwear'. At least its better than all the bloody adverts for baby sleep programs I've been getting recently.

I'm convinced of it too, although I'm well aware of what experts say and that it might well be in my head. It doesn't stop the creepy feeling I get when my FB and google ads are suddenly all targetting travel to a specific country that I've never had even a passing interest in, but where a neighbour went (who isn't a FB friend or anything), and we had a brief chat about her holiday.

My microphone's turned off now. I'll get my foil hat if it continues.

You don’t have to be convinced. It is. We’re handing out our data constantly. Alexa is listening all the time-otherwise how would it know when you said “Alexa”?

OMFG

Right off to turn all microphones off.

I was on holiday with friends and one of them had been bitten by mosquitoes, we had several conversations about his very bad reaction to being bitten. Adverts for mosquito zappers started popping up on my iPad. I switched the microphone off, had to go looking to find it though. The ads stopped immediately. So yes all devices are listening to you.

I've realised this too! Was talking about baby monitors with the camera motion detectors, I don't buy baby stuff on amazon, then all in the "you might be interested in this" section there they where starting right back at me