To think FB or Amazon are spying on me

[Jjacobb]

There was a thread recently about favourite household gadgets. Lots of people mentioned Roombas. I posted on the thread but didn't mention Roombas.

Later that evening I briefly mentioned to dh that I would quite like to get a Roomba. He asked why and I said lots of posters on MN recommended them.

Today my FB is full of adverts for Roombas from Amazon. What sort of freaky trickery is this. I'm quite perturbed by this. How does FB do this?

Uhh yeah it's called cookies. It's because you clicked on a link that had a product mentioned, that's how online advertising works.

Because it picks words up using the microphone on your phone.

No I haven't clicked on any links or googled Roombas. I understand how online advertising works AuspiciousPanda I'm often followed around the internet by things when I've clicked on links. That's not what happened here.
I read that thread then mentioned them to dh that's all.

If you’ve given them permission, several apps will now listen to your conversations when you’re using them.

I replied to someone who had mentioned something on WhatsApp and then started to find links to it on the side of pages online.

There's been a lot of threads on this lately... yes they do

Your mobile devices listen to your conversations.

Im pretty sure cookies can be placed on your computer responding to text or links on your browser page. Other sites can then read these cookies, see that you are "interested" in these products and then advertise to you. Hence all the people on MN who get followed around the internet by penguin bollards.

We've had the same thing, we think it was an app on DDils smartphone. Its actually freaked me out how good their recognition software must be. I have a distinct accent and had trouble with earlier versions of speech to text software.