Is your iPhone listening to you?

[The-Real-Deal82]

Yes, I have encountered this a few times and it has happened with something very obscure that I have never Googled too. My wife and I were talking about a particular umbrella pot that she wanted for the hallway and some time later an ad for that product showed up in my feed. That confirmed for me that the phone listens while you have Facebook open and I really don't know how that is legal tbh.

 

[Cruncher]

I work in IT and I get that question asked a lot. This Video explains a lot:

 

[iLuddite]

Yes; I remember years ago discussing cold/flu-like symptoms with my stepmother in the kitchen and then looking down and immediately seeing an ad for Delsym on Reddit (whether it was an app or the website, I can't recall). I also can't remember which iPhone model I had at the time but it certainly was an iPhone of some kind.

 

[fatTribble]

I have a friend who works for a major data firm; he has told me that he thinks if people actually understood how much (and what) data they had on people there would be literal riots. 😬

Just curious, has your friend ever given you tips about how to circumvent data collection by these companies?

Personally I have no Google or Meta accounts. I don’t use Google for search. Most of the time I research a product I’ll go to retail sites like Amazon or Best Buy rather than an internet search engine.
I regularly delete website data from Safari. I’m not sure how effective any of these things are. I’m not sure what else to do.

 

[cableguy84]

Not only listening to you… but bear in mind how much of the phones super powerful processor is dedicated to machine learning. These phones know what we are thinking before we have even thought of it, have experienced it myself

I have been thinking of stuff without even verbalising or searching within google. Hours/minutes later this stuff has appeared as advertisements