Signs that your phone is listening to you, even when in your pocket
 

Yesterday at lunch my wife and I were talking about what shoes she should buy for work. I recommended Keds. I probably said the brand a few times during the conversation.

Later that night, I fire up Chrome, and there are Keds ads ALL OVER the first site I visit. Keds for Women specifically. I have never seen a Keds ad before, or even an ad for shoes. Also I have personalised ads disabled on my Google account.

Note that this was a VOCAL conversation we had, not texting back and forth in messenger apps filled with spyware. The phone was turned off, in my pocket.

I've heard rumours that Apple has been doing this for a while, and that Google was going to start soon. I never believed it, because they are usually pretty up front about these things. I still don't know for sure if it was a coincidence or not, but when I posted the story on my Facebook, plenty of people claim to have had similar things happen to them.

Have any of you had this happen? What do you think?

^

This has happened to me fairly frequently lately, iPhone 6 before I upgraded

Wifey was razing me about tampons of all things, probably mentioned them a few times jokingly trying to annoy me etc. then I'm sitting in the couch reading a few articles on different sites and there are tampon ad'a at the top..

Can you talk to your wife about Toyota Corolla and report back? Only way to test it.

I might try something like that. It would be pretty easy to tell, because I have targeting disabled so the ads I usually get when I first open Chrome are just random shit

Just got the ad again LUL they even use an Asian model

http://i.imgur.com/S90QjHN.png

I have a "feature" on my phone that asks for permission to listen and record so as to provide a better listening experience to music/media, found it sketchy when I was given the prompt, now I'm even more suspicious lol

maybe install a packet sniffer and see what kind of information is being sent by the phone?

This could be a huge story if someone can get to the bottom of this.

Edit: did a quick googling on the topic. FB seems to be the culprit. Let me see if I can dig something else.

What phone are you using SP and what app do you have installed (just the major ones)... might be easier to replicate.

Nexus 5 with the basic stuff.. Only non google apps are Twitter, FB, FB Messenger, Whatsapp, Instagram Dropbox and a couple minor things

The ads I'm seeing are Google ads on their network, not on Facebook or Instagram or Twitter.

I don't think a packet sniffer would help as tons of info being sent to Google all the time anyway LUL

Is it at all possible that your wife was looking at keds before she had a conversation with you?

This is very hard to believe, but not unbelievable.

Also the possibility that if you were on wifi they've attached your IP address to searches done on other addresses using the same wifi.

Every time I go to work I get these weird ass ads on all my devices... so I know what my coworkers have been googling... then I go home and they're gone.

^ X2

Absolutely not possible. She didn't even know her current shoes were Keds replicas LUL

I forget what I was chatting about inside mec yesterday, but when I got home every ad thst popped up was regarding this very specific thing...it was very weird as it's not something I have even looked online for. I don't even remember what it was, it was that specific

your phone isn't even off, when it's off.

Even when you pull the battery there's probably some fucking wizardry still happening.

watch Citizenfour, the original interview with Snowden in hong kong. He makes sure to unplug the phones in his hotel room :lol

at least there's some solace knowing the government doesn't care too much about your shopping preferences.

Facebook Says It Is Not Listening To Your Conversations For Ads Using Microphone Access

[Discussion] Facebook listening to conversations through microphone?

Dude,

You need to start talking "Porsche", "Lamborghini", "Ferrari" when your wife's phone is around. Pretty soon, she'll be accustomed to seeing those ads, and she wouldn't be surprised if you show up with one of them in the garage.

Heck... I know what I'm gonna talk about with the wifey now~!

any chance you possibly activated your phone while talking to your wife?

I keep the double tap feature on my phone turned on and since I usually have it in my front pocket I'll tap it while walking with my hands in there and sometimes with just the screen facing my thigh it wake up the screen as I'm walking. I'll end up making pocket dials, texts that say "asdfj2309asdkjf a.,sdjfkd", turn the music on, open chrome etc.

I hope someone is listening in what I say when it's turned off lol. Who ever it is listening must think me and my boss deserve a one way ticket to the mental asylum while we're working all day at work lol.

I think this is a part of it as well because I've also seen ads pop up on my phone for searches I've made on the computer

The only wifi I use is at home. Besides, that would still be quite the coincidence, to be on the same wifi as someone who is searching for Keds, and somehow Google fucks up and attributes that search history to my account just because I happened to be on the same network.

This may be just a fluke, but a 100% random Keds ad would be much less of a fluke than that, IMO.

When my gf gets into the car to drive somewhere, her phone automatically tells her how long it'll take to get to the destination. Scares the shit out of her lol.

would smash that asian model


would not pull out / 10

I've never witness this myself on my iPhone but heard it from my friends on their android devices.

sounds like some Black Mirror shit right here

Oh are u using chrome? With a login? My mobiles chrome is linked to my desktop etc so I get the same tabs and bookmarks if I need em, imagine it works on searches and ads too