My phone spying me

This morning i was talking to mrs about buying a film projector. Bit of long chat as she was against it.

Never googled it. Propably in 3 months. Dont let mrs touch my phone. (obviously😉)

This evening i open the face book, first ad was projectors. Totally random!

Wtf!

Do you have the facebook app on your phone and does it have access to the camera and mic?

The book o' faces denies spying through your microphone, but we know they do it. They use background conversation audio to target advertising.

If they do it, we can imagine other companies are spying, too. Google, I'm looking at you.

Happens all the time with my wife and I. My wife and I was talking about urns for her dad and shortly after we started seeing ads for urns popping up. They scan the messages too.

originally posted by: Pandaram
This morning i was talking to mrs about buying a film projector. Bit of long chat as she was against it.

Never googled it. Propably in 3 months. Dont let mrs touch my phone. (obviously😉)

This evening i open the face book, first ad was projectors. Totally random!

Wtf!

Holy cow! this sort of thing happens to me too. Only I'm wondering if my computer is picking out words in e-mails perhaps and then I get ads coming up about things I have been thinking about. I completely understand how this makes me seem like a nutter, admitting something like this, I for sure don't believe something/somebody is spying on me...but I have to say I've had more than a few WTF moments in recent years at my computer. It's like my mind is being read.
Ok I'll stop now, LOL

a reply to: Jubei42

Yeah bud. Full on smart phone like everyone els.

a reply to: Pandaram

Had similar accident. Was talking with my lady about order a pizza. She asks which one she should choose. I told her order from "Music Pizza". She typed word "pizza" in google and first prompt was... "music pizza".

Its real, sadly very real.

This is bit out of order. If is it true. But what can we do other then paying for it.

Well I must say it seems it's more than just a few of us, it makes me feel better..or does it make me feel worse ?! at least I don't think it's a half-baked idea anymore.

I just shared my experience. Weird things on facebook force me to delete account and think about my activity.

I deleted mine a long time ago (deleted, not de-activated, they make that incredibly "hard" to do) and I regret ever making one, what was I thinking? During the short time I was on there, I saw so much targeted advertising everywhere it was almost funny. If I want to talk to distant friends and relatives, I just call or text 'em now. Book o' faces's benefits just aren't worth the tracking and spying.

I don't know about being actively listened to. But google, your browser etc remember sites you've been to or searched for, and that will reflect in ads, even here. I was doing a search for salt lamps, and for days had ads for them show up.

haha someone here complained a while back that many ATS ads were gay porn. So that tells you something about their browsing history

Well if it is true, it should be easily reproduced in an experiment. And if you can prove it and it does violate some kind of agreement/breach of trust and or privacy, you should be able to sue.

But chances are it is not reproducible OR you agreed to something you werent aware of

Get a less "intelligent" phone, or be less paranoid.

Facebook showed me someone "I may know" today, and I did infact know him, however only through the game launcher STEAM. We play l4d2 together a lot, especially the last few months. I recognized the picture, and sure enough it was him. No mutual friends, he lives in an entirely different state, so HOW did Facebook know I might know him???

I'm with you Facebook creeps me OUT!

-Alee

I deleted or deactivated my FB years ago, and it seemed hard to do at the time. I might be able to just go there now and have it reactivated, not sure, but I'm not going to find out. Anyway, I'm not big on social media crappola. ATS is about the only site I make any contact with people on the internet. And it's sporadic at best.

a reply to: Pandaram
A friend of mine tested this. They placed the phone on a coffee table and then began talking about some random item that she had never looked up on her phone. 30 minutes later when logging into Google...there was the ad.

Very scary times...Tie in the "internet of things" and you have no idea what's listening.

Not sure where you have been but yes, you're phone is spying on you and it doesn't need Facebook to do it. I don have a Facebook account or a Twitter account. No Snapchat or Instagram either. I still have the exact same thing happen to me. My phone hears something and it then gives me ads based on what it years.

If you have an Android phone with Google Now, an iPhone with Siri or a Windows phone with Cortana. All those phones have voice command capabilities and all of them are listening to you and your surroundings waiting for a command. They pick up everything and you get marketed to as well. They will tell you that they only listen for commands, your own eyes and experience will tell you that they listen to everything.

Either way, there is nothing you can do. You can completely disable all voice command options. You can turn off all apps that have access to your mic. There are other options as well in the setting of your phone and the settings of each individual app that you can change, block or disable. However, it's a lot of work and will greatly diminish the capability of your smartphone and the experience you can have on your phone. It's up to each person what their privacy is worth.

I think most apps with advertising do this. I posted another example not too long ago but the other day I had a new one. I use Clean master for it's one tap hibernate feature (much easier than force closing apps that don't need to be running). I don't have anything to do with pot but I was having a conversation with my wife about why I don't plan to get a medical marijuana card. It wasn't a long or in depth conversation really, just personal experiences and reasons for not wanting to go that route. Also, keep in mind I've NEVER searched for anything of that nature on my phone or anything else connected to my Google account.

A few minutes later I noticed my battery had dropped 20% in less than an hour. Apparently I had forgotten to force shut a few apps that drain the battery in the background just as much as if I were actively using them. Open Clean master and there's a series of ads for the Leafly app (it's a medical marijuana dispensary directory among other things) and multiple ads for individual dispensaries. That got me wondering so I clicked the news section and shock of shocks! About two dozen stories about pot and one about the relationship between Trump and Putin. I guess they thought that one story would camouflage what they're doing.

If you read the T&C of Google's longtail tracking as well as the permissions for apps like Facebook, Google Search, any personal assistant, and many many others, it is provided that they can passively use your smartphone's microphone to collect marketing data and "better serve the user" by tailoring eerily relevant ads. So far, the owners of your information have been reluctant about selling or disbursing to LE their raw audio data, but it should make you a little more considerate of what you say when your iPhone is on.