You said it in front of your phone - now it comes up in your social/advertising feed

originally posted by: Mandroid7
Before all the microphone/cam equipped devices, they could actually reverse speaker polarity and listen back through the devices.

The quality wouldn't be that good, I suppose.

originally posted by: CharlesT
a reply to: LanceCorvette

That's why I don't use a laptop with a camera and microphone. I use a desktop, no camera and no microphone.

If it has a speaker on the MB, it can still pick up sound, same electro-mechanical effect from the voice coil as a mic, just more robust.

originally posted by: Tulpa
a reply to: Cobaltic1978

It's very freaky indeed.
It's happened to me a few times. Have you tried deliberately thinking about something odd to try and make it happen?
I did but nothing happens. It's only happened when I thought about random, irrelevant things but freaky all the same. It's only happened when I think about something then later I get a YouTube video recommended for that topic.

As regards the advertising side of this, it's useless for me. Most of the things I buy online are books on paranormal topics or music CDs and vinyl.
Not once have I seen an ad for anything remotely useful to me.

A "boomerang", of sorts?

a reply to: angelchemuel

Morning Jane. Keeping well I trust.

Not yet but last pre lockdown Christmas my 11 year old Niece was tickled pink that she could do that.

Kind of regretted buying her the dratted thing lol.

My grasp of Welsh has lapsed but it might be worth re-learning a few lines to confuse the technology.

originally posted by: LanceCorvette
Haven't had one of these threads in a while.

I'll go first with something that happned yesterday:

Was tallking about a potential client on the phone with a referral source - kind of a local celebrity, the potential client we'll call XX.

Told my SO about XX later that day, phone was in the car with us.

Later after that Insta put a picture of the XX in my feed, when XX has never been in my feed before.

old news, they listen to whatever I say and so.

a reply to: LanceCorvette

My concern is not that the algorithm is listening but that its manipulating me into talking about the things it wants to sell me

originally posted by: slatesteam
This is synchronicity. Thoughts are things.
They might even be alive and interact...

Well, as memes, certainly. But that's just any language. It continues to grow and evolve over time, but now we have these directed algorithms running in the background all the time trying to tell us what we need and want.

I do see that there are variations in how deep some people are in the... "marketverse?" It's a bit like quicksand. You order a bottle of vitamins from Amazon because you can't find it locally and pretty soon you're neck deep in ads for things that you can't tell whether you "need" or just "want" them. But it takes work to stay out of the quicksand, and for the most part they're advertising things that you actually might want.

It's like everything else in this crazy existence. A monkey's paw. Our ancestors used to dream of the day when a person could get practically anything in the world just by wishing for it, and now we kind of have it. But it comes with a terrible curse and very little free frozen yogurt. (Simpsons reference)

Well somethings working better now.
Been seeing adverts for headphones today. Just not very good ones.
If they're reading this, I could do with some new slip mats. .....
Send free samples to my home address.
Thank you.

originally posted by: Tulpa
Well somethings working better now.
Been seeing adverts for headphones today. Just not very good ones.
If they're reading this, I could do with some new slip mats. .....
Send free samples to my home address.
Thank you.

I suppose it will work if you're typing something into this website. Don't see why not, unless you're using some kind of proxy to post here. "They" know who you are. So maybe you'll get some advertisements pop up for some good, high-quality slip mats at a reasonable price, and free shipping.

a reply to: Blue Shift

I was half joking.
It's most likely from previous eBay use.
The part that I find annoying about the adverts is that they just never seem to advertise anything that I want. Even though I know they should be able to see what I've bought previously.
I'm aware that they'll know all that stuff but why do I see ads for car maintenance things?
I don't drive anymore and haven't owned a car for years.
Poor targeting.




Now....about those FREE slip mats???

originally posted by: Tulpa
Now....about those FREE slip mats???

*touching my index fingers to my temples*
Free slip mats. Free slip mats for Tulpa.

We'll see what happens.

originally posted by: butcherguy
a reply to: AaarghZombies
Coincidence eh?
Several years ago, on Christmas morning, my nephew mentioned a specific game for a gaming system.
My phone was lying on the kitchen table in front of me. Within minutes, an advertisement for that particular game came up in my Facebook feed.
I am not a gamer.
Quite the coincidence.
Now I take notice of this kind of thing. It happens a lot.

You were probably on their wifi, and the ad was served to you base don the fact that somebody else on that IP address had searched for the game.

We have two PCs in my house, we get ads on one from Google searches on the other. These are personal PC, neither of us use the other person's computer and there are no services or log in accounts in common. Only the IP address for the broadband.

originally posted by: KansasGirl
a reply to: AaarghZombies

Out of all the things about which to be in denial, why this one?

It’s not an urban myth, lol. Why in the world are you trying to convince yourself it’s an urban myth? There is zero reason to believe this stuff isn’t happening. It does. It’s probably even been admitted by the tech companies or intelligence agencies, at some point somewhere.

Why in the world are you fighting this one? Lol.

What is more likely, that a multi national company that you can launch a class action lawsuit against is monitoring you, or that this is being caused by a rogue app that you downloaded doing it covertly as a form of spyware?

a reply to: Blue Shift

No harm in trying. I've still got a bit of optimism left.

Tips hat.

a reply to: AaarghZombies

You can only launch a class action lawsuit against them if they didn't warn you about it.

Maybe they did it in their terms of use, those that nobody reads.

This happens to me all the time.
I'll talk about something without searching or engaging with the subject online, but there it is as an ad a few days later.

I recently bought a new laptop and covered the webcam with coloured tape to be safe. My wife thought I was crazy at first, but now she's starting to come around now that she's starting to get targeted ads on subjects that she's never searched for.

Happens regularly. Me or my wife will be discussing something and next thing it's popping up in ads in our phones.

Most recent was an extremely obtuse reference to a neighbour's gazebo - a word we wouldn't use ordinarily. Within 3hrs we were both getting ads for garden furniture despite not having searched, mentioned or reference anything to do with garden furniture for months.

I get youtube ads for the retirement home where I work.

My youtube account is not linked to anything where I've searched for this.

I don't think I've ever even typed my employer's name anywhere on my computer, so I'm puzzled here as well.

I have a friend who made an app

If you want to use an app you must give up access to your phones

Camera
Microphone
Internet history
GPS history
Contact information

All this social data is mostly going to China where there are putting it into computers to learn how to enslave America's in a subtle way.

Soon china may create a virus that effects everyone without Chinese DNA.

China Is playing a serious game of conquering the world. conquering those in competition with them
China is playing a serious game, building man made islands, surpassing the u.s. navy, years ahead of a space force.

America and mostly Democrats are concentrating on opening borders, killing jobs, handing out money.

American better wise up.

originally posted by: Bloodworth
If you want to use an app you must give up access to your phones

Camera
Microphone
Internet history
GPS history
Contact information

No, that depends on the app. When I installed a QR Code reader app a couple of months ago it asked for access to the camera, photos, contacts and GPS. I accepted access to the camera and rejected the others. It worked as expected.

All this social data is mostly going to China where there are putting it into computers to learn how to enslave America's in a subtle way.

Do you have any proof of that? The data, usually, goes to the person/company that created the app, unless they gave/sold that information to others.

Soon china may create a virus that effects everyone without Chinese DNA.

The same can be said about any other technologically advanced country, like the US or most European countries.