Our Phones are Listening

[Shabu]

Last night at work I was telling a colleague that I was going for Covid & Flu jabs today (I'm now not as I'm sick again) & he told me that he's getting his RSV jab this week which is something you have to get when you turn 60.

I'd never heard of it before & have no idea what it is.

Two minutes later I get in my car, look at my phone & there's a commercial for getting an RSV jab at CVS Pharmacy. Never seen it before but now this morning there are more.

Is this just a mad coincidence or is Google or someone semi listening to my conversations & trained to send me stuff based on buzz words they overhear?

It's all a bit freaky.

[dasnutnock3]

Yes, your phones are absolutely listening to you and have been doing so for at least the last 10 years. You’ll find you implicitly granted permissions to do so, of course, buried somewhere in the terms and conditions you didn’t read.

[Shabu]

Yes, your phones are absolutely listening to you and have been doing so for at least the last 10 years. You’ll find you implicitly granted permissions to do so, of course, buried somewhere in the terms and conditions you didn’t read.

Just reading that line tired me out. There's no way I could plough through a whole Terms & Conditions saga.

[dasnutnock3]

I first got suspicious after a completely banal conversation in the office car park where I was discussing my kitchen remodel with a colleague, and I made a remark about how nice it would be if you could get combined washer dryers that stack two high in a cupboard somewhere, rather than having to commit two 600mm cabinet spaces to house them side by side. No computers nearby, hadn't googled or researched anything about it, but I did have my phone in my pocket. Then later that day some ads appeared on a webpage showing double height combined washer dryer appliances, exactly as I'd described earlier that day, and until that point I had no idea they even existed. There's absolutely no way that happened by chance, and it only could have come from my phone listening to a private conversation without my explicit consent.

Make no mistake, absolutely everything with a microphone is listening 24/7. Your phone, your computer, your tablets, your alexas, your TV, your doorbell, webcams, everything. It's all sending back to the big cloud data farms and it's picking apart everything you say in order to build up your digital profile, and try to sell you things.

[SxHammer]

It is highly, highly unlikely that your phone is listening to without your permission. However if you use Assistants "Hey Siri/Google" then you have given permissions for it to do so.

You can check which apps have permissions to access the device microphone in the settings, whether in the foreground or at any time. (at least you can on Android, I assume iOS provides similar functionality).

Any tech company that is secretly "listening" is committing serious fraud and is sitting on a ticking time bomb of being exposed. They just aren't doing it unless you've given them permissions.

[Heysel76]

They just aren't doing it unless you've given them permissions.

Should read "They just aren't doing it unless you've REMOVED YOUR permissions"

[Shabu]

Yep, especially as I live in the US where corporations have sooo much more power & rights than some average no-one like me.

[Crouchend_Hammer]

It is highly, highly unlikely that your phone is listening to without your permission. However if you use Assistants "Hey Siri/Google" then you have given permissions for it to do so.

You can check which apps have permissions to access the device microphone in the settings, whether in the foreground or at any time. (at least you can on Android, I assume iOS provides similar functionality).

Any tech company that is secretly "listening" is committing serious fraud and is sitting on a ticking time bomb of being exposed. They just aren't doing it unless you've given them permissions.

they almost certinaly are listening
there have been plenty of conversations i have had at home and then very quickly after that i have been served ads related to that specific conversations
these are in-person face to face conversations. not based on any other internet activity

[Tenbury]

Unless they're all f*ing off and dying, they're clearly not listening to me.

[iLoveLasagne]

A lot of the apps and games are there just for this purpose. Some have no ads, no fees so you think why did they even make it? How do they benefit? It was confirmed to me that they definitely do listen a few years ago when I was speaking to my colleague in the office about coffins. A fairly specific subject matter which had not been talked about before. There were no searches on my phone about them. Literally minutes later I started getting banners along the bottom of websites advertising coffins.

[Monkeybubbles]

I absolutely swear that there have been a couple of occasions where I've just been thinking about something and relevant ads have popped up on my timeline.

[SxHammer]

Our brains are literally hard wired to see patterns even when there aren't any.

It's like 11:11 being a magic time of day. It's so magic that you will start to see this on digital clocks all the time from now on.

[r99c]

they almost certinaly are listening
there have been plenty of conversations i have had at home and then very quickly after that i have been served ads related to that specific conversations
these are in-person face to face conversations. not based on any other internet activity

Same here, I have a Samsung with not many apps on it, and I don't have Siri/Alexa etc. Just the phone, and the adverts do come up based on stuff I've said out loud.

[WestSamUtd25]

Keep Bluetooth on and you are aslutely being tracked and listened to.

[SxHammer]

Keep Bluetooth on and you are aslutely being tracked and listened to.

In what way?

[Monkeybubbles]

I wish my phone would listen when I tell that Tombola advert to **** off.

[bonzosbeard]

Our brains are literally hard wired to see patterns even when there aren't any.

It's like 11:11 being a magic time of day. It's so magic that you will start to see this on digital clocks all the time from now on.

Start thinking or discussing a certain car model for example, it's all you'll see for days.

[Shabu]

Start thinking or discussing a certain car model for example, it's all you'll see for days.

Yep. I'd never even heard of this jab before my colleague mentioned it & two minutes later, seriously, it was two minutes, up pops an advert for it.

And more today.

To be honest, I'm not that bothered. It ****ed my missus out though. She's half Laotian so already suspicious enough of everything

[WHU Independent]

I'm going to try and say a few specific thngs today i,e, "I'm thinking of buying a white transit van" - and see what happens.

[Shabu]

I'm going to try and say a few specific thngs today i,e, "I'm thinking of buying a white transit van" - and see what happens.

Let us know.

Mine wasn't even me saying it. Just a colleague with a thick Mexican accent