Is google secretly listening to me?

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BDFL - Memuneh
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#2754534 3-Aug-2021 15:27

xpd:

I just want to remember what I was talking about thats caused Facebook to start displaying "hot women looking for husbands" adverts all the time.......

Lucky it's not "women looking for hot husbands" as Google would have targeted you in the wrong group then.

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#2754590 3-Aug-2021 16:59

gregmcc: Should I now start wearing the tinfoil hat?

Total waste of time - tinfoil was hacked ages ago!

Handle9

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#2754600 3-Aug-2021 17:23

Fred99:

dafman:

The key difference is that iPhone allows you to block apps tracking you across third party apps, you can't do this on android.

And that's the reason why - unless Google implement the same in Android - when my Pixel phone is retired it'll be replaced with an iPhone.

Yip. I'm due to replace my phone at the end of the year and will be moving to iPhone.

Daynger

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#2754611 3-Aug-2021 18:07

If you want to know just ask.

I asked my phone and it said no, i trust it.

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#2754622 3-Aug-2021 18:28

CYaBro:

Happens with iPhones too sorry. :)

Many examples of it happening to myself and my wife and we both have iPhones.

EG: was at a friends place one day and they had a dart board up and the kids were playing darts and talking about it.
I didn't use my phone while there except had it in my pocket.
That night back at home I started seeing ads for Darts and other things related to playing darts in my Facebook feed.
I've never searched for anything like that in the past.

OMG!

ripdog

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#2754633 3-Aug-2021 19:04

I've been seeing this rumor for years now, but not once a technical investigation of how it could be possible. Smart home devices don't have nearly enough processing power to do voice recognition on-device, so to be spying on your conversations, they'd need to be sending audio to the mothership constantly. This would be trivial to detect for the network operator. So, how?

On a mobile, it's even less possible. While a mobile could be sending data constantly, the power demands of doing so would murder your battery - there's no way device manufacturers would let google do that when it would make their products so much less useful! The power efficiency of modern cellphones relies heavily on almost every component, especially the radio, turning off for as long as possible.

And again - there's no way google and apple could be performing mass surveillance of ambient audio on such a vast scale without some evidence being discovered. On-device binaries, network traffic, unusual battery usage, anything! The complete lack of reasonable explanation nor concrete evidence leads me to the obvious conclusion that this is just confirmation bias.

sxz

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#2754656 3-Aug-2021 20:03

No, my understanding is that it's not listening to you (in that way). It's listening for 'ok google' only.

My understanding of how your targeted ad has appeared, is that google (through location history) was aware that you were in close proximity to your parents for a few hours, and can make some target ad assumptions that you might like what they like, or what they've recently used or searched or been to. Wouldn't be hard to implement, and would explain a lot of the situations I've ever come accross where it feels like google has been eavesdropping.

For example: Friend searches Allbird shoes. Friend buys Allbird shoes. Friend tells me about Allbird shoes. I start getting ads about Allbird shoes, without ever searching for it. I believe I get that ad because my friend searched/bought it, and google knows we are friends.

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#2754836 3-Aug-2021 22:22

sxz:

For example: Friend searches Allbird shoes. Friend buys Allbird shoes. Friend tells me about Allbird shoes. I start getting ads about Allbird shoes, without ever searching for it. I believe I get that ad because my friend searched/bought it, and google knows we are friends.

Jesus freekin Kriste.

In that case, I hate to think what kind of ads my friends are seeing.

Most of the posters in this thread are just like chimpanzees on MDMA, full of feelings of bonhomie, joy, and optimism. Fred99 8/4/21

antonknee

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#2754841 3-Aug-2021 22:44

I don’t think anyone fully knows the secrets of ad targeting, but I don’t see how it can be listening. I don’t have Alexa, and I don’t use Siri. I also don’t use Facebook at all and I only use Instagram very rarely and via a browser. I frequently clear caches and delete cookies (not so much for this reason, mostly for work related stuff). I still get oddly creepy ad results that seem to mimic recent conversations.

I remain convinced some of it is sheer coincidence, some of it is simply that X brand is currently pushing hard, some of it is demographics, and some of it is that I did in fact search for that thing and just forgot about it. I’m also fairly certain that @sxz is correct in that interpretation around friends/family, as that would certainly line up with some of my past experiences.

Varkk

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#2754901 4-Aug-2021 09:23

sxz:

No, my understanding is that it's not listening to you (in that way). It's listening for 'ok google' only.

My understanding of how your targeted ad has appeared, is that google (through location history) was aware that you were in close proximity to your parents for a few hours, and can make some target ad assumptions that you might like what they like, or what they've recently used or searched or been to. Wouldn't be hard to implement, and would explain a lot of the situations I've ever come accross where it feels like google has been eavesdropping.

If it is listening for "OK Google" then it is listening. In theory anything which isn't "OK Google" should be discarded but some smart TVs were found to send all audio for processing to detect the voice commands. What happens after that is anyone's guess.

Another thing is ads target based on the IP you come from. So if you visit your parents house and they were searching for dartboards, then you connect to their wifi. This means you are now associated with their WAN IP in Google's system. And in Google's system people associated with that IP are interested in dartboards.

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#2754917 4-Aug-2021 10:11

ripdog:

I've been seeing this rumor for years now, but not once a technical investigation of how it could be possible. Smart home devices don't have nearly enough processing power to do voice recognition on-device, so to be spying on your conversations, they'd need to be sending audio to the mothership constantly. This would be trivial to detect for the network operator. So, how?

On a mobile, it's even less possible. While a mobile could be sending data constantly, the power demands of doing so would murder your battery - there's no way device manufacturers would let google do that when it would make their products so much less useful! The power efficiency of modern cellphones relies heavily on almost every component, especially the radio, turning off for as long as possible.

And again - there's no way google and apple could be performing mass surveillance of ambient audio on such a vast scale without some evidence being discovered. On-device binaries, network traffic, unusual battery usage, anything! The complete lack of reasonable explanation nor concrete evidence leads me to the obvious conclusion that this is just confirmation bias.

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#2754950 4-Aug-2021 10:59

Its also your TV
At least 1 TV brand was caught recording conversations sending those recordings to a 3rd party.

the horse has bolted, cats out of the bag, past the point of no return...... privacy is gone
We all just tick accept on those pop up T&C's

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#2754954 4-Aug-2021 11:14

This should be very easy to test. Stage a conversation about [some brand name item that you have never had any interest in] within hearing of your phone. Monitor ads being served to you for the [brand name item].

Varkk

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#2754968 4-Aug-2021 11:51

frankv:

This should be very easy to test. Stage a conversation about [some brand name item that you have never had any interest in] within hearing of your phone. Monitor ads being served to you for the [brand name item].

My boss and I were talking about 3D printers at work the other day. He said he is now seeing ads for 3D printers popping up on his Facebook feed. He carries an Iphone no Android devices.

frankv

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#2755074 4-Aug-2021 14:43

Varkk:

My boss and I were talking about 3D printers at work the other day. He said he is now seeing ads for 3D printers popping up on his Facebook feed. He carries an Iphone no Android devices.

Yeah... I think those switching from Android to Apple are just jumping out of the frying pan into another frying pan.

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