So I had a verbal conversation with a coworker yesterday and now I’m getting fed very specific ads. No possible way it’s accidental. I have most of the microphone access to apps limited, I have Google assistant turned off and no VPA setup in my home. I use a Oneplus 9 pro, does anyone have recommendations on how to further root cause this or just par for the course for using any standard android OS? Have other folks had similar experience after locking down their stock phones?
Every single example of this happening is anecdotal. The people who tried to properly investigate this have not found it to be true. If you find a video of an actual serious research who proves this is true then I’ll admit that I’m wrong. Otherwise these types of posts are useless
your coworker might’ve looked up things related to the conversation, and the ad provider figured out that you two are in the same social circle. so far I haven’t seen any actual research that would prove that ads are tailored based on microphone recordings (and actually seen the results stating the opposite a few years ago), just a bunch of anecdotal stories.
This. It’s a form of cognitive bias. You notice when you see ads for something you’ve been thinking about, but you don’t notice the dozens of other times you get ads for things that are completely irrelevant to you. If they were actually doing it, you’d notice it happening all the time.
That’s actually a great point. He is older and uses a dumb phone but we have been working with each other over 5 years so there are going to be lots of connections to each other. Furthermore this coincidental ad is rare, I haven’t gotten one like this in awhile.
pinephone has hardware killswitch. but that cant protect you from other devices like other ppl phones.
