Freaked out!!?!

[prozacfree]

oh my goodness, this might be a simple explanation and I apologise in advance but I need someone to clarify it with me.

So I sent an email at work today to a company who is quite obscure and nothing I would ever google whilst at home. My colleague also had a jacket delivered to work and showed me. It was quite unusual but probably from a high street store.

I've come home from work and have just now logged on to facebook and the company that I emailed has come up as an advert and the exact jacket has come up as an ad further down. Is google spying on me?

Maybe get an Adblocker on, that goes a long way towards stopping it, though DH did try that and it was like his laptop and phone was infected with Google and it bypassed the blocker, I only use Apple myself and don’t get this.

I was telling my daughter about a book I was reading. The family were travelling through the Everglades on an airboat, and the next thing i know, i had adverts coming up on here and fb about booking trips travelling through the Everglades on an airboat. Spooly.

I had a conversation on the way home from school with a friend about how we would survive a zombie apocalypse. A silly, jokey conversation. When I got home fb was full of ads for an online school course (Outschool) on how to survive a Zombie apocalypse....

A cousin of mine works in advertising and basically compares have the option to pay to ‘listen in’ and target adverts that way. It’s very immoral and for that reason he has come off all social media.

I meant spooky.

Slightly different but I was using my phone to make notes during a conference and the predictive text was always one word ahead - it was obviously listening to the speaker. Easiest note taking ever!

I was on a lockdown skype call with a friend on my husband's laptop, my phone was lying unused next to me on the table. Said friend explained that when we could all get together again she wanted to do a particular charity 's murder mystery night which you get as a package. After the call ended, I went onto facebook on my phone and there at the top was the advert for this exact product from the exact charity friend had discussed.

Like hell is that a coincidence!

A lot of it is that targeted advertising is SUPER clever though in that patterns of behaviour are established so much that adverts will be suggested to you that companies know you’re likely to need / want and then people go “omg it knows so much about me!”

It isn’t you, it’s all the people exactly like you who have done exactly what you’ve done prior to you doing it

I know phones and stuff listen but I still find it mad. It's not so weird when it's something I've been searching as you sort of expect it then, but the latest I remember was when I went to my friends house and her kids were offering me sweets, Fruitella. I think they might've mentioned the name of them just once and boom I'm getting ads for Fruitella just hours later.

One that I always find funny is if I talk about one of my colleagues who's name is Hywel, pronounced like hugh-l...and then I keep getting ads for some meal replacement thing called Huel! Sounds the same but definitely not what I was talking about!

I like talking about random things and seeing when the ads pop up

oh and the thing that annoys me the most is when it bombards you with things you have already bought. like come on advertising, if you were really that smart you'd know I already have this!!!

My DH’s son sent him a photo of a new pizza oven he had bought (as a text message on his mobile) and my husband showed it to me and we chatted about it for a while. Later, exactly the same oven appears on my Facebook feed as an ad, my device rather than his. How did that happen? I was so spooked!

Advertisers use something called “probabilistic matching” to do this. They’re constantly gathering information on your devices, IP addresses, browser, your most common geographic locations, who you’re regularly in close proximity with etc and using it to ‘retarget’ you with adverts. It’s getting more sophisticated all the time as they gather more information. So it feels like you’re being watched but it’s all just tracking all these identifiers that we leave as a trail every time we do something online.

OP if that freaks you out I take it you aren't aware that our mobiles can be used to listen to our conversations even when you aren't making a call

@sierradelta so that’s a great example. Advertisers have worked out that there’s a connection between you, your DH and his son through a pattern of communication between you, using the same IP address and/or being in the same location regularly. They’ve picked up the photo of the pizza oven and then an advert has been pushed to you.

I work in advertising (well digital marketing).
Yes they are listening to what you say - but it doesn’t mean that someone like me can go oh”op likes x”.
You get (anonymously) but into a group of people who like x or y.

When you go onto any website - there’s usually tracking set up (remember that cookie thing you just say yes to). We will then retarget you,

It’s not mystical - it’s just how it works.

Personally I’d rather have stuff I’m actually interested in shown to me than random crap

Happened to me this week. I was out in a loud cafe, phone in my zipped up bag on the floor. Friend mentioned very briefly going for a very specific private medical procedure. Later that night Facebook was sending me ads for that exact procedure.

Never haopened to me

That's what cookies do, they "follow you" and link across devices. You can also turn your phone mic off, but that's not always practical. I have mine turned off in some apps

@icedaisy

I was at sil on Saturday. Dd nearly two was walking with a wiggle and hands on hips. SIL said she's so sassy, hey little miss sassy pants.

All week on Facebook and Internet an advert for my rocking kids, top with little miss sassy pants. I didn't even have my phone with me!!!!

You don't need to have your phone with you, in the same manner that you don't have to sign up to Facebook in order to have a Facebook account. If your number is in your friends/colleagues/whoever's phone, then you have one. That's it.

Ooh, this is one of my fascinations tbh......

Weirdest recent one I've had - I'm crap at putting on eyeshadow. I'm of the Gothic persuasion, so like a nice dark smokey eye and I generally end up with a dusting on my cheekbones that requires clean up and extra layers of foundation / powder. I know there are ways round this but don't have the time or inclination to watch a billion tutorials on Youtube - I just muddle through and it ain't that big a deal.

However, one particular morning, I was doing my usual routine of futility and I thought to myself - Note THOUGHT - no words were said out loud - "I wonder if someone has invented sort of absorbent post it notes for the face that you can stick under your eyes to catch the excess eye shadow....." and sort of mused upon the subject IN MY HEAD while I finished off.

Ten minutes later I hop back on my laptop, and there, on my FB newsfeed is an advert for PRECISELY that product on Wish. It exists.

Obviously just a co-incidence but a little bizarre none the less. I don't generally shop online, and certainly not for make up so if it was an algorithm I'm buggered if I know how that worked......

That said, a quick google brings up stuff like this:

www.businessinsider.com/facebook-mind-reading-tech-ctrl-labs-acquisition-backlash-2019-9?r=US&IR=T

Which would rely on some input from the subject for the interface, but at the risk of going all tin foil hat, if this is being touted now there's a possibility it has been developed elsewhere, for example for military purposes - and it has been said before that any commercial tech promoted at any given time is ten years or so behind developments behind the scenes.

I have just come to accept that the AI and Big Brother tech is properly on its way and it will become even more difficult to function as part of society without it.

Defo happens. I was talking to my husband about buying drawer liners for our new chest of drawers. Never searched it online but when I wrote "dr" in Google it came up as an automatic suggestion which was completely random. Then I got loads of dunelm mill liner suggestions as adverts.

Just as a heads up, when you download apps on your phone you're also giving permission for them to scan and access the contents of your phone as well (there is a marketing term for this but I cant remember what it is at 5.30am!) Which is in the small print no one every reads. So chances are if you're mic picks up key words you'll be served adverts, or based on your app/search history. Google then use this information to predict future buying trends and create algorithms based on user behaviour. Its all very intrusive.

To take this to another level, FYI your device camera and mic also work when off by said apps. So make sure you cover your phone camera when you're getting changed ladies!!!

I actually said to a mate the other day that I want my Nokia 3210 back and to pay with cash for everything.

I bought a hair mask from the supermarket. Didn’t mention it to anyone, didn’t google it, just picked it up cos it was near my usual shampoo and I thought it might be good.

That night it was on my Facebook ads, even on my suggestions on amazon ‘based on my browsing history’, except I hadn’t searched for it or anything similar. I decided my phone and my credit card must be spying on me.

I then got an ad for a shop that sells ‘reconditioned non-smart phones’.

And I’m being spammed by the fucking moomins after commenting on someone’s Facebook picture that, at age 42, he’s too old to wear a moomin t shirt. Ads everywhere.

Thanks for the heads up. Just checked the apps I’ve enabled to listen in. Only Skype / Zoom. Plus TikTok for dd. Have turned TT / Zoom off. Not using it.

I was wrapping a gift last week, and asked my daughter if she knew if we had any clear tape spots left as I couldn’t find them. She wasn’t sure at first what I was talking about, so I explained about them again and she said she couldn’t find any either. The next day of course I was swamped with adds on instagram from a label company, with pictures of round tape spots in different colours. It happens all the time, wheter your phone is on or not. I hate it.

We live in a capitalist economy/culture. What do you expect??