To test if your phone is listening to your conversations, start by openly discussing a unique topic that you’ve never searched for or discussed previously
... then see if it appears in your ads. Saved you a click.
this post was submitted on 11 Apr 2025
-16 points (31.8% liked)
Privacy
36701 readers
1136 users here now
A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.
Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.
In this community everyone is welcome to post links and discuss topics related to privacy.
Some Rules
- Posting a link to a website containing tracking isn't great, if contents of the website are behind a paywall maybe copy them into the post
- Don't promote proprietary software
- Try to keep things on topic
- If you have a question, please try searching for previous discussions, maybe it has already been answered
- Reposts are fine, but should have at least a couple of weeks in between so that the post can reach a new audience
- Be nice :)
Related communities
much thanks to @gary_host_laptop for the logo design :)
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
This might sound naive, but what ads? I don't get ads on my phone, I have functioning adblockers on my browsers, and I use alternate front ends for the occasions I have to access normie social media.
I don't watch TV or listen tp the radio, I read books and research papers primarily, and my actual social media use is on the federated options using apps that don't have ads. I have my phone pretty tightly locked down, so even the apps I use don't have ads.
Aside from the occasional product placements in something, I don't get much exposure to advertising. And before anyone goes there, I work from home and don't even see billboards. I don't even get flyers.
Would I have to change a lot of that to run these tests?
So I cant even test if my Phone is listening. Great!
(I havent seen an Ad in a decade)
Absolutely. I’ve tested this with friends, and we pick random topics or products we would never need or look up. Sure enough, we both start getting ads within 24 hours.
Got into a rare mild argument with my wife last week, and we started getting marriage counseling and dating app ads. Fucking infuriating.
Notice the plausible deniability that’s always put into ‘we are not spying on you statements.’ Zuckerberg will tell Congress, ‘Facebook is not listening on your phone,’ but that leaves it open for a third party partner to be doing the spying for them.
If you can reproduce it that reliably, I would be interested in hearing the results of an experiment where you have a clean phone and install just one of your apps at a time to see exactly which apps are spying on you. We all have our suspicions about which are definitely doing this, but it's hard to know for sure without a proper controlled test.
How can you be sure that the "random" products aren't something that you've seen ads on (but not remembered seeing), which stuck in your subconscious, and then you regurgitated as the random item? Then later when you saw more of the same ads, you noticed them and they seemed like new, targeted ads.
You would need to use a random topic generator, not just come up with them via brain.
Yea pretty much a real thing was talking about bikes the other day and now getting ads for bikes in youtube
Google listening to everything
Apple, Facebook, Instagram etc all of it are constantly working on the back.
If you share wifi with someone who has done the search on their devices, It will do that.
It don't. Mostly becouse it don't have to. Your online behavior is easier accessible and a better predictor... (pretty bad over-all, but still better. Digital Marketing Bubble is bursting!)
Weak article
But to rescue the topic: yes, technically it could spy you and upload hashes of each 5 seconds of your mic into a datastore for recognition. But why do it in such a long and pricy way when the ads suppliers (one fo them being google) have all your demographics they need? And sometimes even know if a click on an ad banner resulted in a purchase. And that way don't have to recognize if that was you talking, someone on the street or their own ad
Read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12609433-the-power-of-habit
Even using anonymized discount loyalty cards fuels the recognition which ad to push your way
Tried this; continued to see no ads for anything at all. Am I doing it wrong?
Yes it does, next question