Can my phone read my mind

[crochetmonkey74]

I know this sounds mad. But over the last few months, on approx 6 occasions I have been thinking about something. Sometimes quite an obscure thing or place. I notice that within an hour , an advert comes up on the phone for the very thing. I haven't typed it on anywhere or searched anything . What is happening? Has it been just a coincidence every time?

I get this, it's straight out of a Stephen King novel.

This has happened to me so many times that it's actually very unnerving. I posted this on mumnset and got some really sneering responses which were basically implying I'm stupid. There were things that came up that were just incredibly specific to things I had been thinking about and the creepiest was something I was looking at. I looked at something on the street and thought about it, and 10 minutes later a video about that thing came up on my YouTube feed. It was so incredibly obscure.

My husband says that AI knows is better than we know ourselves, and profiles us so carefully that it came make very educated guesses about what we will be into. However, even that can't explain some of the things I've been recommended after having a thought.

Also, prepare for lots of talk of 'confirmation bias' and how its basically just a fluke that very specific things you've been thinking about keep coming up on your social media.

Facebook uae to do this to me until I turned microphone off.
It's listening

Happens to me too! Randoms stuff I definitely haven't searched for or looked at. Makes me doubt myself that I'm talking out loud but I live alone

I certainly think they track your location even to the point of what shops you have been in and advertise things to you! Not sure about reading minds but it is creepy

Yep

I think OP means when you've thought about something not spoken about it!

The looking at stuff thing is weird isn't it. I also doubted myself as I live alone, I was thinking did I say it out loud? But I know I didn't. It's happened more than once and has been very specific. I'll give an example : " I'd like to go on a cruise, I wonder what the buffets are like" next time I look at my phone- suggested video of a cruise ship buffet!

But the OP isn't speaking it's things she's only thought about

Mine did this. Really freaked me out tbh. I was wandering asda and picked up this lunchbox with compartments, a sistema one. I didn't comment on it, just picked it up, looked at it and put it down. That night, all I had was adverts for sistema lunchboxes.

Agreed! Me and my husband started saying things like "wow, we've got so many kids pictures, we need to frame them" sure enough, kids picture frames were there. We have a bit of a laugh sometimes trying to get the most obscure things on our Facebook feeds.

If you’ve hesitated for a moment over a previous cruise ad I think it will use that to feed you more ads

Yes I don't believe in mind reading but I cant explain it, it's freaky! My experiences were similar to your cruise buffet example, and too random to be a coincidence.

But I hadn't. It was literally just a thought

One of my examples was walking back from the shop one evening. I saw a guy I vaguely know from the area and he was with his little boy. I don't know the little one, but I did notice when I saw him that his features were quite distinctive in a way where I did wonder if he had some kind of medical condition. It was a fleeting thought. In and out of my brain in seconds. I got home, put the shopping away and opened youtube on my phone. One of the first videos was an adult with the same features as the boy I saw, entitled 'Living with XXXXX Syndrome (can't remember what it was called).'

I nearly dropped my phone and did feel incredibly shocked.

The algorithms are smart and even though you might believe that a particular topic/item is only swimming around in your mind, there's a good chance that your browsing history, location, contacts, communications, subscriptions and other data are discoverable and identify your interests pretty accurately.

Or there's a poltergeist in your phone

This happens to me. It's so creepy.

This happens to me too. It is very unnerving

I am a big believer in confirmation bias and coincidence over superstition, but I swear this happens to me too. It's unnerving. Going to have a look how I can at least turn the mic off.

Where are the microphones? I want to turn them off, but am very tech unsavvy.
My DP found his iphone was doing this, listening to his conversations and popping subjects up at him. Scary!

If you turn the Mike of does that mean you can't talk on the phone?

Yes. It's happened to me as well. Just thought it not spoken out loud. Freaks me right the fuck out

It's bad enough when it's something you've said outloud but when it's something you've only thought of its terrifying

This is what my husband says, but it can only explain so much. Most people who are feeling freaked out by their thoughts ending up as targeted ads, do understand the link between previous interactions with their phone and the content the phone then tailors to them. It's separate to this. I understand that if i Google 'holidays in Morocco', or look up photos of Marakesh, send messages or have a chat with a friend about going there (while near the phone), my phone will understand I'm considering a trip to Morocco.

If I have never in my life expressed the slightest interest in going to Lima, never googled it, looked it up, interacted with it, dont know anyone from Lima etc but I see a headline about it out of the corner of my eye on a magazine in a newsagents, and briefly remember something somebody told me about Lima a few years ago and then have a bit of an internal dialogue about Lima and then get ads about Lima on my phone, I know it's not cookies.