Is this tinfoil hat territory or are they really listening to us.....?!

[NeededANameChangeAnyway]

On a whim I bought DH some Hawkstone beers using my card from a tiny independent shop in the tiny town I work in. The only gadget in the room when I gave them to him was our phones. No Alexa's or other smart speakers.

Today I get a Facebook advert for the Hawkstone beer advent calendar.

Is this a coincidence to beat all coincidences or are they listening?!?! .

No, your phone isn’t listening to you. It’s your digital footprint. You bought something using a card, this creates a footprint used by advertisers.

@TY78910 I'm maybe being stupid but how is my card linked to Facebook? Is anything digital just an amorphous mass of information anyone can look at?

It might have been picked up by your phone microphone depending on your settings. But no one is listening

Yes, I've had this before, me and dh had a conversation about a random item only device in the room was my phone no purchase made and not something we would buy anyway and we got advertisements for that very thing that evening its happed more than once.

Your phone listens to you and then shows you relevant things unless you have the microphone turned off

They are listening

I called my DD by a very specific nickname as a baby

The Instagram ads came up for a specific book by an author of the same name - zero chance I would've searched it

😩

Test it out. Say I really need to buy a stairlift/vegan handbag etc etc and you’ll be shown them

Your card is linked to your name, address, date of birth etc. Your Facebook account is also linked to your name, date of birth etc. Facebook makes most of its money from linking together all that kind of information - and a huge amount more - and selling it as demographic data to advertisers. Facebook is not the only one doing this.

Phones are listening. Happened to me and DSis during our conversation, both looked at our phones and what we were talking about showed adverts to buy within 2mins!

Wait until you start seeing things you’ve thought about but not said out loud!

It’s not Facebook directly, it’s advertising engines that power social media content. It was a while back that I looked in to this so I don’t have the right articles on hand but everything you do, purchases, searches, gets pooled in to a bunch of information that feeds targeted advertising. Your card will be linked to online banking, online banking to your footprint. It’s not spying in the sense that someone wants to know what you’re doing, it’s that they want to make money off you.

Other ways this happens is beacons - they are small devices that larger retailers put in their shops that then feed ads to your phone. I can’t see the small independent shop having the budget to do this, but if you ever see yourself in the likes of H&M, John Lewis etc you’ll make the connection.

Is this penguin bollards all over again...?