to think google is watching me?

[tdm1]

I've had a Joe Brown's catalogue on my desk for weeks - it came unsolicited with a magazine I suscribe to - and today I looked at it for a few minutes before binning it. I've just come on to mumsnet for a quick break and first thing I see is an ad for Joe Brown's! A bit too coincidental for comfort.

If you have an android phone and have mentioned the catalogue out loud or in any texts etc. then yes, Google is listened to and tracking you and will advertise accordingly. Facebook will do the same if you have FB Messenger on your phone.

I've had all sorts of adverts for things I've never searched for online, but have had conversations about at home or mentioned during phone calls/texts. Scary what info they have on all of us!

Yes, it is.
I have no idea why it thinks I watch Coronation Street though. It's never been on or mentioned in my house.
I confuse it by travelling to different places for work though, it thinks I live in Ireland at the moment.

I stopped to look at a lunchbox in asda once. Was on my own so didn't say anything or search it. It was just a passing interest. Picked it up opened it and sae how big the compartments were and changed my mind. I had adverts coming up for it for days afterwards. To this day I still wonder how they did it.

treeofhearts cctv in the supermarket mapped to phone location, technically that is not very difficult. However it's much more likely to be a coincidence that you noticed the adverts because you looked rather than actual tracking.

I was watching finding Dory with my nephew on my Now Box which Is connected to the Internet.
Anyway I decided I wanted to know what type of fish Dory was. No sooner had I typed in "What type" Google finished off my sentence with "fish is Dory".
It also happened when I was watching a documentary about 911. I only typed in when and it finished off my sentence with
"Where the twin towers built". The very question I was wanting to know.

much more likely to be a coincidence that you noticed the adverts because you looked rather than actual tracking.

Exactly. You didn’t notice the 100s of times an ad for something different came up.

Yes it is listening if you have any smart device with a microphone.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3039980-To-be-suspicious-my-smartphone-listens-in-on-my-conversations

There is a way of turning off the microphone on smartphones so that google can't listen to you, but not sure how you do it.

Forget listening, Google does a pretty good job of tracking you, unless you turn off it's Google Maps service (and keep it off).

Next year we plan on a weekend drive to paint a symbol over the UK using Google Maps ....