Facebook - how is this possible?

[CBAMumma]

I was having a chat with someone about a holiday she went on with a company called 'Luxury Escapes' - not really into travel myself so don't follow or search for any info as such. I'm also not connected to the person I was chatting with on any social media. We have swapped texts in that past but that is all.

When I opened my phone and looked at Facebook thirty mins later there was an ad for Luxury Escapes. I checked my iphone settings and microphone was disabled for Facebook so apparently it shouldn't have been listening. I do have an apple watch but Facebook is not installed on that.

Of course this could just be coincidence! But I have had similiar many times. It's just this time I was so sure there is no other connection to this person or the company.

I'm sick of Facebook claiming it doesn't listen, then getting a load of suspiciously targetted ads. Any ideas what is going on?

I was recently in our kitchen talking to DH about getting a new battery for our car key. He told me he thought Timpsons would do it and there is one at Tescos. When we got in the car and turned the satnav on, the quickest route to Timpsons came up... I can only assume it was through Alexa which is in our kitchen, but I'm pretty sure it was turned off! I hadn't googled it as it's only down the road

If you have Alexa or Google Home devices, there will be your culprit.

I don't have Alexa or Google Home. And I didn't even have the conversation at home. This isn't a one-off either, I'm just certain of the exact circumstances this time).

I was wondering if there is some sort of cross-platform listening (eg I have microphone enabled in WhatsApp on my phone so I can make calls, but surely this couldn't pass to Facebook)

Phones that are sharing WiFi or 4G/5G connection will be shown advertisements based on what each phone has searched for.

Given WhatsApp is owned by Facebook, this isn’t that unbelievable. Meta would just be using what it already knows about you. On an iPhone you can turn off cross app tracking.

I actually watched something that said it’s much scarier than it listening. Your phone knew you’d been in proximity with your contact’s phone for an extended period of time, and it that she’s been looking at luxury holidays so therefore they may be of interest to you.

You will have also seen a load of ads you dismissed, so there is also an element of confirmation bias. You’ve been shown 20 other things you didn’t talk about that it thought was relevant and only one has hit the mark.

And I can’t remember the name of the phenomenon but I think there’s also been some studies that show it’s like when you get a yellow car, you start seeing yellow cars everywhere. You might have scrolled past that ad 100 times in the last week and tuned it out but now you’ve noticed it as you’ve been speaking about it.

The amount of data available and used when deciding what ads to show you, it’s not that surprising (but definitely terrifying) that they overlap with your real life every now and again, as the data can basically predict what conversation topics might come up in your life.

As an example. I ordered elf blusher from Amazon last week. Guess what Ad keeps on popping up on Mumsnet?!!

Phones in close proximity to each other will pick up on what the other has been searching.

Thank you all, this clarifies a lot. And especially for your informative post@DaisyHaites!

I'm mind blown how sophisticated this all is. Good to have some understanding of how it fits together.

On the basis that meta have lied repeatedly about selling contact data and leaks, I wouldn't be surprised.
Perhaps when ITV make a drama about Meta, people will start taking notice in the meantime I try to avoid their products.

If being in the proximity of your contact is enough for the phones to "exchange" searches, that indeed is scary. Good point about being shown lots of other things without talking about them. The fact remains that a lot is going on in the background of every click. And even without clicking or searching different algorithms will get certain ads/pages to appear where we don't expect them.

There is huge amounts of data, and even being 'anonymous' is of no help. The algorythm doesnt care who jane bloggs is, or her date of birth, or address...

It can put enough data together from browsing habits, physical movements, which wifi networks yiu connect through to be able to work out and seperate likely individuals from all the noise. Behaviour, habits, succeptibility to adverts can be calculated and targeted.

Everyone should watch The Great Hack on netflix to see how these data points allowed advertising to be targetted at the 34,000 specific individuals likely to swing the us election, to the level of specificity of putting specific adverts on specific billboards on specific peoples commutes.

I had a similar thing last week. DS was talking about converting his garage to a home office and I commented that it had a big pitched roof which would be excellent for storage if he got it boarded out. Went home, opened Facebook and had two ads for loft boarding companies. My mic is turned off for Facebook, I don’t have an Alexa or anything and Siri is turned off on my phone.

Coming to this a little late, but...

A number of computer security firms have looked at this and have proved that Facebook, etc. do not listen to your conversations. Stories don't go away and are sometimes fuelled by the press, but the reality is that controlled experiments have proved that they are not lying. They really don't listen to your conversations. If they did, your phones would be using a lot more data than they actually do.

The reality is a mixture of cognitive bias and sophisticated algorithms.

To take cognitive bias first, we see ads all the time. Most of the time they aren't relevant to us so we just scroll past them without taking them in. So, in OPs case, she may have been seeing ads for Luxury Escapes regularly for some time but simply ignored them. Then she had a conversation with her friend about Luxury Escapes. The next time an advert for Luxury Escapes pops up, OP would notice it because of the conversation with her friend. So, if it is cognitive bias, it is not the case that Facebook has suddenly started showing her ads for Luxury Escapes. What has actually happened is that OP has suddenly noticed that Facebook is showing her ads for Luxury Escapes.

The other part of it, the sophisticated algorithms, builds on the data Facebook and other social media collect on you. To take Facebook, they know who your friends are and what they are interested in, so can infer that you might be interested in the same things. They know where you are as long as you've got your phone with you or are sat at a computer where you are logged in to Facebook. It knows who you are spending time with. It can track you across all your devices. It can get data about your calls and texts (although it can't access the content unless you use Facebook Messenger, which is why Messenger encourages you to use it for all your text messages). All this data can be used to figure out what you might be interested in and serve appropriate ads.

Of course, Facebook's algorithms aren't perfect. If, instead of simply scrolling past them, you pay attention to all the ads, you will see how often Facebook serves up ads that are completely irrelevant to you and your interests. And, if you do it for a while and keep notes, you will see how often that advert has been served up to you before you suddenly notice it because you've talked about the subject with your friends.

So no, they aren't listening to your conversations. They have much better ways of figuring out what ads might be relevant to you.