this post was submitted on 09 Nov 2026
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Fight For Privacy
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A coworker scrolling mentioned double stuffed Oreos, something she hadn’t had in a while. Boom, next ad: double stuffed Oreos. “They” really are listening.
I had a phone call with a friend of mine, who told me that a person we both knew had lupus. We talked about it for a minute or two, because I’d only heard about it on house and didn’t know what it involved. Starting that afternoon, I got ads for lupus for about two weeks. I know I hadn’t received those ads before because I play a word game for which “lupus” is a really useful word, and I had not seen its spelling before then.
This was about 15 years ago. It could be a coincidence (but I’m not the age or race most predisposed to lupus), but I’ve been a believer in phones listening to you since.
That isn't how it works, listening to conversations would need too much bandwidth or processing power to be useful.
More likely that whatever prompted your coworker to think about those cookies also triggered the ad.
Or they have been getting those ads without thinking twice about them until they noticed when they were thinking about them.
Or it is just plain coincidence.
Nope. I worked as a marketing director before I remembered that I have a soul. A radio advertising rep tried to sell me passive listening ads.
According to that rep selling this service, it worked like this: All of these devices, including your phone, passively listen for keywords that get repeated frequently enough in a short enough window. They feed those words back to the mothership. An ad is then delivered across all ID associated devices targeted toward that keyword. This process is delivering an ad within 45 minutes.
For example, you talk about needing a new tent, you're gonna say tent and camping a few times in that convo. Camping/tent get beamed up. Within 45 minutes, you're seeing tent/camping ads in your apps and on websites across all of your devices because of your advertising ID.
It is not coincidence. They are literally selling this feature to their clients.
Yep. Guy I know cut off his finger using a table saw. They were able to sew it back on, and he was fine. But while he was recovering in the ER, his phone was served up ads for Sawstops (for those who aren’t into woodworking, these are table saws with advanced safety features that would have prevented this injury).
At that point he hadn’t even typed in on his phone yet what happened, but obviously people (himself, doctors, nurses, intake folks, etc) had been discussing the accident around him for hours at that point. It was pretty obvious that on some level his phone was listening to what was talked about. This was in 2012…
Just because he didn't type it in himself, doesn't mean noone did. For advertising it is not needed that you are searching yourself Tracking the Microphone without the approval of everyone that could be heard, wouldn't even be legal here in Germany since DSGVO (and probably the rest of the EU since it's the German implementation of GDPR). What they still can do is tracking what everyone Else searches as well as analyze which Phone ist close by. Are you in the same WiFi range as others? Are you in bluetooth range? Is your Location Data matching? What ist the location you are currently in?
In this case I'd say some of the doctors or nurses searched for it and treated it afterwards, so the phones we're in range often/for a longer period of time. They will now what job they have. Now this guy comes in, they search for saw wounds and then contact him often.