Nah, I have never once seen an ad through Facebook that wasn’t targeted or based on a web search I had completed. For instance I was googling prepaid carriers a few weeks back, and instantly the same day every other ad in the Facebook app became prepaid carriers or phones. That’s understandable because I had googled it in another browser and that’s how ad tracking works.
In my 10+ years I’ve never seen a fragrance ad until that day, and it was the exact same scent I had been looking at. That is not coincidence. Even had the store name that I said out loud, Walmart.
This happened one other time at work when a coworker offered me a lesser-known brand of sparkling water. He’s a diabetic who prefers one brand of flavored water and that brand only. He asked if I wanted some (didn’t say the brand name). I had my phone out and was just using it on my lunch break to do whatever. I politely said no thanks. Later that evening, in Facebook, I was receiving ads for that exact flavored water company. Creepy stuff.
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Because people have this false sense of security all locked up, it’s irrational but they think “Well, that would be illegal, no apps could be doing that on my device!” But they do. Of course they do. If money is involved any type of privacy is always going to be off-limits IMO.
I’ve had many instances of the exact same thing you describe - I just posted another about a brand of water that was shown to me at work. Not even mentioned what brand it was but boom, that same day I was getting ads about it. The camera had to have been activated in order to find it. These companies ARE spying on us, lol, it really isn’t crazy at all to recognize it and be alarmed. There’s just nothing you can do though unless you want to give up your phone and disconnect from the internet entirely.
