Every time someone comes out and says that the phones aren’t secretly listening to us, I gotta tell this story.
I was at one time practicing therapy in a University. We did charity work, and I was providing therapy to a homeless man. This homeless man did not have a phone, or any electronic devices of any kind. We kept in contact via email, and he would use library computers in order to connect with us.
While providing therapy for him, the only electronic devices in the room are a batter operated digital clock, a battery operated voice recording device, and my own cell phone, locked and inactive. Nothing but my cell phone is connected to wifi or internet of any kind.
During session one day, he started talking about wanting to move to another country. We hold our usual session, with plenty of talk about moving to that country specifically. Once the session is over, we say goodbye and he goes on his way. I go back to my desk, and within an hour or so, scrolling on my phone, I’m getting advertisements for flights and vacations to that exact country. I had never gotten advertisements to that country before, or even for much travel in general.
So how do we explain it? The most common answer is “Oh, well he used his phone to look up flights and stuff, and google detected that your phones were near each other, and must have assumed that you would talk about it.”
Except the other man did not have a phone, nor did he have any way for Google to tell that he was near me after having looked it up at a local library. There was no way for Google to be able to tell that he was coming to our office at all unless it was reading his emails, and even then, it couldn’t know that he was talking to me specifically, such that I would get the targeted ads and none of my colleagues would.
Nobody can give me an explanation for what happened other than my phone was actively listening to the conversation. I’m definitely open to alternatives, I promise. Nobody has been able to explain it.
I get ads in Spanish if my phone hears me use a rotary saw a lot. I used to think it was from working near Spanish-speaking work crews, or purchasing lumber, but it’s happened from isolated backyard projects using materials that had been bought with cash weeks prior. The adbots are listening, and they think power tool noises are a dialect of Spanish.
Every time someone comes out and says that the phones aren’t secretly listening to us, I gotta tell this story.
I was at one time practicing therapy in a University. We did charity work, and I was providing therapy to a homeless man. This homeless man did not have a phone, or any electronic devices of any kind. We kept in contact via email, and he would use library computers in order to connect with us.
While providing therapy for him, the only electronic devices in the room are a batter operated digital clock, a battery operated voice recording device, and my own cell phone, locked and inactive. Nothing but my cell phone is connected to wifi or internet of any kind.
During session one day, he started talking about wanting to move to another country. We hold our usual session, with plenty of talk about moving to that country specifically. Once the session is over, we say goodbye and he goes on his way. I go back to my desk, and within an hour or so, scrolling on my phone, I’m getting advertisements for flights and vacations to that exact country. I had never gotten advertisements to that country before, or even for much travel in general.
So how do we explain it? The most common answer is “Oh, well he used his phone to look up flights and stuff, and google detected that your phones were near each other, and must have assumed that you would talk about it.”
Except the other man did not have a phone, nor did he have any way for Google to tell that he was near me after having looked it up at a local library. There was no way for Google to be able to tell that he was coming to our office at all unless it was reading his emails, and even then, it couldn’t know that he was talking to me specifically, such that I would get the targeted ads and none of my colleagues would.
Nobody can give me an explanation for what happened other than my phone was actively listening to the conversation. I’m definitely open to alternatives, I promise. Nobody has been able to explain it.
You have gotten ads for vacations and for that country and they never passed cognition
I get ads in Spanish if my phone hears me use a rotary saw a lot. I used to think it was from working near Spanish-speaking work crews, or purchasing lumber, but it’s happened from isolated backyard projects using materials that had been bought with cash weeks prior. The adbots are listening, and they think power tool noises are a dialect of Spanish.
If he or you have a gmail account, Google reads your emails.
Irrelevant considering the travel conversation didn’t happen over gmail
Shut up, dweeb.
Takes one to know one dork!
😁