Is my phone listening

[littlebillie]

Today at lunch we were discussing wider shoes as a friend has developed a bunion and it's killing her.

Roll forward 8 hrs and my phone during reading a CNN news story offered me surgery for bloody bunions. Is this a coincidence? I am now very concerned about being listening phones. Please please assure me this is paranoia! 😩

It’s nit paranoia. Your phone can and does listen to you

Yes it will do. You need to turn it off.

I reckon we're all being watched.

Like that scene in Men In Black, except we're not aliens. Well, I'm not, I can't speak for everyone.

'They' watch us on a wall of tellies.

If it does listen, how?

There’s an option to switch the mic bit off somewhere in your phone.

Unless it’s facebook, you just need to dream something and it’ll chuck an ad for it at you

Is she going to have surgery on it?

Why don't we all say bunions and see what your phone brings you back in the next 24 hours

Don't know about the surgery but after seeing the advert I would run a mile

I had the surgery.

I've had some incredibly precise examples of this and my mic is turned odd permanently. It's horrible.

This is the first time ever, now I really want to see its capability

Yes it listens to you. I have an iPhone and have switched Siri off. I think that is all you need to do. I hope so anyway.

Wow, I was talking about getting a soda stream to make my own sparkling water to stop buying it and generating more plastic waste and I looked on fb and saw an ad for a soda stream. Couldn't believeit. i had not googled.

Yep, this has happened to me too. Talking about a hol in menorca and it then pops up. It’s creepy. I am going to turn Siri off and see if that helps

Of course it listens to you.
This is what targeted advertising is all about. They buy your information off companies like Facebook.

I'm surprised that people are surprised about this - Alexa, Siri, that's what they were invented to do and even if you don't actively sign up, the businesses will find another way to get your likes/interests/family connections/inner thoughts and market straight back at you.

Alexa freaks me out, I have enough people in the house chipping in without adopting her

I've just asked Siri if they are always listening and well the answer was vague

Siri has just dismissed me " let's not talk about me let's talk about you " 😯

I have mine turned off and don’t use Siri Alexa etc
Was really weirded out recently when DP and I were having a face to face conversation about something really out there that neither of us had ever even googled
My phone was on charge at the time nearby and that evening I started getting pop ups related to our discussion

I was talking to a colleague about my roomba in earshot of his phone. He had no idea what it was so had never typed the word or said it before. The next day the advertising on his phone was for a roomba.....

I was having this conversation with a friend yesterday - and now mumsnet is showing me this
But in all seriousness, I think it does, we had bought a specific product earlier that day and were discussing it and an advert came up on her facebook for the product.

Yes it does! Turn off access to the microphone for things like Facebook.

I just asked Siri to turn himself off. He said that ‘certain things should stay the way they are.’

Creepy fucker. I turned him off manually.

Siri has just dismissed me " let's not talk about me let's talk about you "
So did you?

Siri is "asleep" now