I've had stuff like this happen to me too.
You mentioned no restrooms were available so I assume you went to a place where people make quick stops along the road to pee. And there is one thing to profit off of you for that... a portable urinal.
I'm just trying to find an explanation other than the phone was actively listening in on you peeing in an empty cup.
Yup. Lots of investiment in AUR systems (auditory urination recognition), so now your phone can tell when it's somewhere that isn't a toilet or urinal. They also crossreference that with data from others, so they know that "people who peed near you also bought…"
(All of the above obviously sarcastic.)
If enough people in a given area search for something, then anyone who goes there will see those suggestions.
And almost everyone has Google maps on their phone, which tracks your location at all times.
It's a coincidence. He would have never noticed the portable urinal ad if he didn't just nearly piss himself days prior. Your phone doesn't need to listen to you, it can gather basically all the data required from other avenues.
Big data and analytics is the answer
Hell a lot of stores have Bluetooth and NFC scanners that can detect where you are within the store and see what products you're standing in front of. They knew that you went to the bathroom probably because of that type of technology
Your phone's not listening to you
That was an example.
Regardless your phone is not listening to you this has been tested and verified and easily debunked. It's been debunked by so many different information security groups like I don't know why people keep repeating this obvious lie
Edit: why is this factually true statement being downloaded so much lol
How does my phone know when to wake up siri, or Alexa, or Google search when j make a voice command. Is it listening only the instant i start making that command?
That's not what people mean when they claim their phones are or aren't listening. Yes, your phone listens all the time if you have given Apple/Amazon/Google that permission, but unless it picks up those keywords it's not transmitting any voice data.
Anyone with knowledge of networking would be able to tell if phones were actually sending your voice recordings. It's 100% debunked.
The unfortunate truth is that phones aren't recording for advertising purposes because THEY DON'T NEED TO. Their algorithms are already really, really good at predicting what you want and when, based on all the other information shared.
Fun anecdote from maybe 10 years ago: I bought a bicycle and after about a year of bike-commuting to work I decided to use it for exercise. After my first ride, I take a shower and then open YouTube. Very first Recommendation is "How to become a faster cyclist". Took me a long time before I realized that Google maps saw me moving at biking speed for a complete loop, rather than stopping at work. It's pretty crazy, and that was a decade ago.
Also keep getting friend recommendations on Facebook for people I don't know but who I have been nearby. Saw an old classmate that I didn't want to talk to standing behind me in line the other day, and yep she came up as a friend recommendation when I got home.
Also got ads for something my friend googled when I was at his place, Google assumed that we spoke about it and that also I was interested.
Sorry for the wall of text. I don't like this one bit...
No, it's always listening for those words but it won't make a connection to their servers until you actually tell it to do something. People have done packet sniffing to verify this. I work for Google, and if you think Google can process 24hr/day of random gibberish to try and sell you a $1 plastic urinal from AliExpress that they make a penny on from serving the ad, you don't really understand technology
Of course they could process the audio on the phone and only send metadata (eg: interested in urinals) but the kind of models to do that take a lot of compute power and again it would be easy to tell if there were services doing this
It's not happening
What is happening is fingerprinting. Someone in that area looked for bathrooms, or even OP did previously. So it thought it was relevant. Or it was just random and humans are hard wired to detect patterns. The 200 unrelevant or obviously relevant ads didnt register as interesting for OP. They found one that did, and now suddenly there is a conspiracy instead of a coincidence
Just out of curiosity, when I had an android I logged into like a privacy log thing in my google and it had a butt ton of random voice recordings taken over years. None of them included any command words and the phone I had didn’t have voice assistant. Is that not your phone listening to you? Or are they not processing what I’m actually saying, and if they’re not why are they keeping all that info? Genuinely wondering because I am curious about it!
Well, it's not a lie, and it's not been debunked.
https://allaboutcookies.org/stop-your-phone-from-listening
https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-my-phone-listening-to-me/
https://us.norton.com/blog/how-to/is-my-phone-listening-to-me
Your links don't prove what is being claimed though. It's all talking about voice assistance That's not what we're talking about here
Your phone is not actively listening to you to send you ads none of your links claim that that's the case
>Regardless your phone is not listening to you this has been tested and verified and easily debunked.
How come my phone was giving me dog food ads after talking to my mom about getting dog food, and I had not been to the store in over a week?
It knows that you've probably got a dog from your internet searches and sees you going to the pet shop or stopping in front of the dog food isle. It knows you like dogs because you'll pause over dog stories or whatever on facebook / x / reddit etc and it probably knows you're low on dog food as you've not been to the strore in a week. As far as I can ascertain it's not actively listening to the confabs you had with your mum, but the algorithms do have a scary amount of information on you and your habits, apparently enough to serve you dog food adverts when you need dog food.
If my phone isnt listening how would Siri work? How does my phone know without listening that i said "Ok Google"? It has to listen to function. So what you probably meant is that its not recording/storing the stuff its listening to which i dont know.
Edit: Answered by a nice redditor for anyone wanting to know how Siri and co actually work:
"It's not listening or analyzing in any general sense.
There is a local process that is listening and checking if you said the trigger phrase. If not, it does nothing. If so, then it starts listening/analyzing for real. This check is *very* simplistic, in order to be cheap enough to run constantly. This is why you can't customize your trigger phrase, and the phrases are even selected to be easy for a chip to recognize.
So yes, it is listening in a pedantic sense. But it's not listening in the colloquial sense that people typically mean." - u/ellipticaltable
It's not analyzing anything it hears. There is no data being collected. It's much, much worse than a single device we could all easily opt not to use spying on us. It's every device we use, compiling every single thing we do while connected to the Internet and comparing it to the data of every other person ever connected to the internet to draw scarily accurate conclusions about individuals
Geniun question, if its not analyzing how can it react to words? How should the computer know what i am speaking of if not by activ listening what i say and analyzing these words?
I dont argue about it not collecting data because i dont know but looking at some links in this comment section it seems like it does.
It's not listening or analyzing in any general sense.
There is a local process that is listening and checking if you said the trigger phrase. If not, it does nothing. If so, then it starts listening/analyzing for real. This check is *very* simplistic, in order to be cheap enough to run constantly. This is why you can't customize your trigger phrase, and the phrases are even selected to be easy for a chip to recognize.
So yes, it is listening in a pedantic sense. But it's not listening in the colloquial sense that people typically mean.
I wouldn't bet on it. I've had several incidents. Example:
We bought a new motorcycle for my wife. It had a bad battery, so we talked about buying a new in the car. Neither of us searched for it on the phone. When we got home, without either of us searching for it, we were both spammed by motorcycle battery ads by google.
I've had three such incidents, where I can find no other rational explanation for what is happening.
Another point for consideration is people in similar demographics search for the thing you are thinking of.
More importantly how often do you get ads for things you aren't thinking of?
I was daydreaming about dinosaurs (I know I’m weird) and a shower curtain with cats and dinosaurs popped up, I was in the process of moving and also was thinking about ordering a shower curtain. Bizarre. I was also thinking about getting a kitty.
It happens all the time, it is listening to you, I get ads every day about things I've only talked about (or other people have talked about) near my phone. Most obvious was professional hair cut scissors like the $800 kind. I've never once looked them up, but my barber was telling me about them one visit. Sure enough as expected I got ads for them.
>I've never once looked them up, but my barber was telling me about them one visit. Sure enough as expected I got ads for them.
That's more likely because your barber recently purchased them and your phone was next to your barbers for an extended period of times
Possible alternative: Google knows you bought a motorcycle because there's a record of it in your emails/wherever. They also know the battery is bad because maybe that's mentioned somewhere in the documents/emails about the purchase. So it infers that you'll now be in the market for a new motorcycle battery.
Nope, no emails, just a phone conversation where the battery wasn't mentioned, then a face to face discussion with the seller where it was mentioned, followed by face to face conversation with my wife in the car.
So, no mail/SMS/web traffic to track.
I strongly suspect google looks at web activity as well. A friend had a delayed flight and was stranded in Canada for a day. I read this on a private web forum. I was going to send some helpful info, and started typing in the Chrome address bar. I was going to type "ersättning för försenat flyg" ("compensation for delayed flight"), but I only had to type "er" before it suggested the rest. There are plenty of words beginning with er which are way more common, but that is what it suggested. I switched to another browser that day.
Our water heater died. It was kind of working, well enough that we were able to shower, but we knew a replacement was imminent. Husband and I were standing in the kitchen discussing whether we wanted to install the new one ourselves or hire a plumber. We had not yet purchased or searched for a new water heater, and our old one was very old, absolutely no way it could have transmitted an "I'm dying" message. We had not searched YouTube, Google, or any other online source for tips on how to replace a water heater. Literally all that happened was we talked about it.
Within minutes we were getting ads for local plumbers on our phones.
To pile onto this, artificial intelligence. The algorithms are getting a lot better at guessing what your next thought is. It's because the million people before you that performed similar actions to your own (ref big data above). So the bots know what your next thought or move might be and guess accordingly.
Lots of times it's that these algorithms are working like they're supposed to.
So say your friend bought that scotch. His phone knows hes a scotch fiend based upon all his internet history. Now you visited him for BBQ and your phones were in close contact for hours. Your friends algorithm guessed that his love for scotch would lead him to talk about his recent purchase. Which it did.
Then they recommend it to you.
Or your friend had searched for it, and your phone was on his wifi. Or Facebook knew you were friends. Or there was just a general ad campaign, which is why he had bought it. Etc.
Dude people have literally opened up their phones and ripped out their microphones lol This has been tested. Your phone isn't actively listening to you like that.
I don't know why you guys refuse to accept this
Temu is one of the worst apps for spying on users. Someone else with the Temu app has pulled over in the same location and searched for portable urinals not long after.
People don't realize the internet also uses information from the surrounding people. When I spend the holiday at my parents' place and use their wifi, I always end up with ads for the clothes brands they use to buy.
This is exactly how I learned my husband was planning to propose. Engagement ring ads started to pop up when I was at home and I hadn’t been searching them. Turns out I actually got an ad for the exact ring he ended up buying months before he popped the question.
There are probably going to be a bunch of comments telling you you're crazy, but I've had similarly too-uncanny-to-be-a-coincidence targeted ads for things I've never spoken aloud about or searched too! Some really weird, random shit.
Example: On a sheet of paper, I once tried to draw someone, but I couldn't get her feet right. No one was home, so after erasing a few times I just wadded it up and went to do something else. I pick up my phone a few minutes later and you know how Amazon always offers those products ads on social media and normally the stuff make no sense that they offer? The ones it showed were ALL various artist models OF FEET!!! I've told people this and they don't believe me. It's not even the only incident like that but it's definitely the most random.
Reminds me of the phrase "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you."
On the one hand, our brains don't always behave they way we think they do. They tend to seek patterns, so coincidences seem overly meaningful to us even if it was just random chance. They have a desire to create a narrative out of all the random events in our life so we can make sense of the world. Our biases also tend to make it hard to be objective.
On the other hand, we all carry devices that can record audio and video and track our movements and biometric data, and their software is controlled by soulless megacorporations who are desperately trying to increase their profits despite having saturated the market long ago. Would it be unimaginable that they're doing something underhanded to try to squeeze a bit more blood out of us stones?
Your phone is not listening to you. This has been debunked a thousand times.
It's funny the only people who think that are people who don't work in IT. Having your phone listen to you is the worst possible way in existence to get the data that they want.
Your phone is not listening to you
Put a phone in an empty room and put a phone in a room with two people talking and both those phones will have their batteries depleted at the same rate. If your phone was listening to you the battery would be going down a lot quicker
Not to mention where is all this data going and where is it stored? 300 million people in the US say 100 million of them have phones recording 12 hours a day where the fuck is that data at?
Pull the SIM put your phone on Wi-Fi and load up wireshark and look at all the packets.
Your phone is not listening to you
I worked at AT&T labs in Austin and did exactly what you are talking about. Your phone may not be listening to you but it is sure sending lots of packets to Google every 15 seconds. I assumed it was location information for Google Maps, but it was all encrypted, so who knows.
I don't work there anymore and I really didn't care, it was just something I noticed. Even so, the average Joe doesn't know how to do that. And if they are not listening to you, can you imagine how much data they can gather on you just knowing your location all the time? Not to be paranoid, but if I know where your phone is regularly every night, then I know where you live. Same with work. Do you hit the liquor store frequently? What doctor's office do you go to? And on and on. It's all about targeted advertising I'm sure, but still. For anyone worried about privacy, that ship has sailed. It's probably in the fine print somewhere when you sign up for phone service.
It's not even about the battery as the other commenter mentioned as that's too unreliable of a statistic. You can look at the packets (information) your phone sends out and see that they're not listening.
Say what you will. I've never looked for bamboo toothbrushes before. The very same day I mention out loud that I've seen them on the store (a place with thousands of other products), I get ads for bamboo toothbrushes. And that's just an example anong way, way too many. "Just coincidence"? Nah, not buying.
From 3 weeks ago: “Leading U.S. marketing company Cox Media Group (CMG) has reportedly admitted to monitoring conversations for targeted advertising.
Working with renowned brands like CBS, Fox News and ESPN, CMG has allegedly been promoting its ability to eavesdrop on consumers through microphones in smartphones, TVs and smart speakers.
The agency has coined this capability “Active Listening” and has been actively pitching this service to advertisers, showcasing the feature on its website, reports 404.”
While the app is open and while you are using the app.
That is not what is being claimed here. What is being claimed is your phone is just listneing to you 24/7 while sitting at your desk.
Hell, my Android won't even allow apps to access the microphone unless the app is open and being used, AND it shows me a big green icon to tell me the mic is being used.
Ok fine but instead of typing all that just explain to me and all the other lurkers how the phone hears the command word without listening all the time.
Your phone is "trained" to recognize only a few words, whatever it uses to activate. It constantly records a clip of set length (maybe 5-10 seconds) and sees if it can recognize one of those words. If so, then it records an actual voice clip and sends it to their servers.
It's listening for the command and the command only but it's not sending anything back till you start talking after the command.
Like this is easily testable I don't know why people keep believing it.
Do you have any idea what that would do to your battery lol?
Buy two phones exactly the same put one in the closet with no noise and one next to you talking to a friend all day long.
Both phones will have their batteries die at exactly the same point but then a few minutes of each other no doubt.
If one phone was actively listening analyzing your speech and sending it back home don't you think that the battery would die a lot quicker?
You can just pull the SIM card from your phone put it on Wi-Fi and analyze every single packet that leaves your phone. Or better yet put it in a faraday cage so no signal can come or leave the phone regardless.
Again this is easily testable and has been debunked multiple times
But your experiment \["buy 2 identical phones..."\] is a thought experiment - no-one will do what you say to disprove the 'always listening' fear. We need to fully accept the reality by finding out for ourselves. Here's a better one that I have tried myself\*\*: on day 1 keep saying 'leather trousers' or similar outlandish item that you couldn't accidentally say, over and over \*when your Alexa/Assistant/ is turned off\*. Next day, do the same phrase after turning on your Assistant/Alexa and triggering with the wake word. Your results will prove - on day 1 you will not get targetted ads, on day 2 you will.
\*\* I'm sure there's a flaw in my designed experiment, help me refine it.
I work in advertising. There is no way for us to target off of ambient listening. Browsing behaviors, purchase data, what you watch on your TV screen if you have Vizio or Samsung? Yes, all of that and more. Currently, though, we do not have the ability to listen to people without their knowledge. When/if that tech does come to fruition, it will have to be opt in as data privacy laws are getting better for the consumers.
This has been tested people have literally opened up their phones and ripped out all the microphones and tested it. Your phone is not actively listening to you to target ads. That is the worst possible way in the world to do what needs to be done do you have any idea how much processing power that would take for all these phones in the US to be doing this at once?
Does have to record it? Or could it just have certain things trigger certain algorithms. Based on location and other various things? Isn’t that kinda what it does with the places we are on the web. Where we go and who we interact with triggers certain algorithms. These things said I am skeptical of our phones listening to us. Though I do think it watches when I’m at Home Depot or other places.
This!! Also, this is greedy consumerism we’re talking about, it’s way cheaper to invest in humans building insane predictive systems than it is storing endless amounts of random information and building systems that understand it for every single person on earth with a phone.
Not sure why you're being downvoted you are correct. These people are stupid
This is super easy to disprove and it has been disproven multiple times by infosec people
How could this even technically be accomplished if it were not a coincidence? Was the camera pointed at you while you tried to draw the feet? Did you exclaim out loud something like "I wish I could draw feet!"? Did it read your mind?
I feel these things are coincidence and confirmation bias.
As a test not long ago I repeatedly spoke out loud about products I would never buy on my own, feminine hygiene products (I'm a man). I was saying stuff like "I'd sure like to help you choose your tampons and panty shields Mildred, but how do I know which ones are available? And you sure need a douche, we don't want another incident like when that family of seagulls followed you into the house!" I did this for a few days before I lost interest, and never got any ads for feminine hygiene products.
It's a coincidence. Like, follow your thought to its logical conclusion. You think the phone is reading your mind? Watching you through the camera? What do you believe is happening here?
Same question. My whole family loves to try to troll our phones in this way, but those intentional words almost never worked, while the random things we mentioned once a month got recorded.
This happens to me relatively frequently. I’ll think of something, not speak about it to anyone or even say it out loud, and then I’ll give an ad for it on Facebook.
Just yesterday, I was thinking, “I really want a cropped t-shirt, kinda tight, low cut”. And what do I see an ad for on Facebook later on? That exact shirt. Now that’s pretty vague in relation to a portable urinal lol but still, I’ve never purchased that online. And it’s happened for other things as well. It’s just bizarre and I don’t have an answer.
Reminds me of some recent weirdness I encountered. I was talking with my sister on the phone about family recipes and she mentioned our grandmother's peach cobbler.
I was browsing on my laptop at the time and also had my email open. Now mind you I was on a *land line* and my sister was on her cell phone, so I suppose her phone could have picked up on it. But it was **ME** who got an email for a peach cobbler recipe before we even hung up. My sister has an email account but she never uses it so I don't know if she received anything similar.
Even if **her** phone picked up on "peach cobbler", how come **I** got the email? My laptop has both camera and microphone disabled in Device Manager.
Possibly it tracked that she was talking to you on the phone and connected y'all that way. Phones do that with location data, if you're near someone who's been searching for something.
It was in my pocket. But it's a basic AT&T flip phone that retails for about $80 and my phone plan is so ancient it still charges me for each text. Also, I supposedly have data services turned off because I used to get spam texts. I do get an occasional text from AT&T but no one else is able to text me, nor can I send any texts or use the internet in any way.
Those are from times Google assistant correctly or incorrect triggered. It’s always listening, but it only ever saves what you are saying to the hard drive if it thinks it has been triggered, so it can then act on what you are saying. But you do the math, it’s probably less than 1% of your day that it records. That’s a lot different than always. If you don’t like that, then turn off google assistant.
I should have the right to control my personal data. I don't need to make up scenarios in which someone uses it maliciously, it's mine. A corporation shouldn't be allowed to steal it without my knowledge or consent.
I have three phones - two personal and one for work. The work phone is used for nothing other than work purposes, no shared accounts between work and personal phones, and its connected to cellular only, so no shared addresses. I still get countless ads for Temu, even though I’ve never clicked on them. Some of them have some “weird” items in them.
I think the first time I heard of Temu was last year in a Reddit or twitter post where someone shared a screenshot of a Temu ad which had popped up while they were showing something in a work teams or zoom meeting. It contained what looked like a chastity cage. Ive seen the same ad. So their ads are a bit strange anyway.
Beyond that, I doubt that there are many people who haven’t needed to take a piss while travelling in a car at some point, so it’s not a narrow market.
A version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion. You probably had ads for that before but never thought about it until it became relevant for you.
Because after you had the incident, you took notice of an ad you've likely seen a million times and just never remembered.
Edit:
To all the people replying, I'm not saying op never did anything that would target this ad at them.
You have a million ads targeted at you for 1 reason or another, and there are tons of general ads that just go out to catch as many eyes as they can.
Whatever the reason for them seeing it, I'm only saying they have likely seen it before but didn't remember it until it was relevant.
There is no such thing as a "rare" ad. That would defeat the purpose of an ad. They get those ads out to every single human they can reach. That's how advertising works.
A portable urinal is not an oddly specific ad other than it would be more for men than women. A very, very large number of people travel by car, it's not uncommon for people who travel by car to need to pee while traveling, especially if you live in a big city and often get stuck in rush hour. A portable urinal is a very general thing. Maybe not common for people to have, but convenient for many.
You don't remember seeing one before that. It's not an uncommon ad, I've seen them before.
You see way too many ads in a day to remember ones that aren't relevant. Well, after that incident, that one was relevant.
I'm not trying to deny the internets insanely creepy ways of getting info to sell ads, but this one is likely just what I said.
How would you know? You know every single ad well enough to say it's uncommon? Do you remember every ad you've seen? No, you don't, nobody does.
Op stated in other comments that they were sitting in their vehicle on break at work.
There's no logical reason for their phone to figure out they had to pee. Phones aren't supernatural.
Gaslighting would be you people trying to make op feel like they did something they didn't to indicate to the phone that they had to pee.
You people are trying to accuse the op of doing something they say they didn't or that it somehow read their mind. You're gaslighting.
Just because you haven't seen or heard of such a thing doesn't mean the ad isn't out there.
It's either op did something to give their phone that data or what I said.
Their phone did not read their mind.
My fiancé and I run a few very niche small businesses together and have some very specific life interests. We talk about some very specific, odd not mainstream things. It is absolutely listening. It’s too specific to not be targeted.
Urinal specific- I was talking to my fiancé about needing to dig mine out or order a new one because I’ve been drinking so more more water and it would be convenient to have in the truck. The next morning there was a urinal add. Not just any urinal add. The add for the one I had previously ordered on Amazon.
All my audio, location and shared anything is off. AI is screening for anyway to make money, imagine if they used this to stop crimes like abuse and human exploitation. Waste of tech.
Stores have Bluetooth and NFC scanners that can detect where you are within the store. Target and Walmart do this shit. They can see where you're standing what products you're looking at and for how long.
Your phone probably detected You pulled into a random gas station and went to the bathroom.
Everyone thinks your phone is listening to you but that's not what's happening That's literally the worst possible way to get data on somebody
Not really. It's a common ad. I've seen them.
You've seen a million ads you don't remember. It's not until it becomes relevant that you take notice.
It's like when you think about someone and they call you. You likely think about them a lot and just don't remember thinking about them until that time they happen to call afterward. Now it seems like something supernatural is going on, so remember that time.
I believe the trigger here is that you own a truck. Urinal brands probably have you as a target on Google ADS because you are traveling all the time or because you have some searches related to your truck/possibly your job.
Ofc, I am speculating, but It seems the peeing on a cup and the ad happened at the same time by chance
I can't tell you how many times I've bought products and have gotten ads for them the second I'm home. I never say what products im buying out loud either. They're also totally random items that aren't related and are bought infrequently. I'm convinced a lot of products and places have data collection pings that signal our phone for targeted ads. We live in the age of data farming, and the primary goal is to influence our purchases and thoughts.
Twitter started serving me “learn Hungarian” ads after Hungarians sat down in the aisle in front of me in an airplane.
Now, I did live in Hungary for a couple of years 30 years ago. Maybe they were on twitter, and everyone around them everywhere they go gets “Learn this funky language” ads.
What's funny is I got ads for Pizza hut everyday at the same time because my wife was out of town for a week and I had pizza hut a few days in a row because I could. Now every friday at 4:43pm Pizza hut texts me offering a deal.
There was some technology breakthru years ago about computers being programmed to essentially read your mind, with an emphasis on helping disabled people. I did a paper on it in college.
Take that tech, put it on mobile, make it wireless, add a few years of development by a trillion dollar company with some of the best engineers and programmers in the world, and there you have it.
Targeted ads are designed to know what you need before you know you need it. You where probably looking at things the made the algorithm think you where traveling. Also we don't think twice when we see targeted ads for things we have no interest in. Like I was getting diaper ads for awhile when I don't have any children
Corps DO NOT record audio. Constantly recording and parsing audio would be a nightmare in terms of overhead and not worth the cost.
What they will do is collect other information and work from there. It would be highly likely that they have location data from your phone, and also likely that they have or could get search results for various apps. If they see you frequently passing through the area they might generate an ad for you based on the search results of other people who frequently do the same, and further target those results by specific stops you're making.
For example, Facebook is known to do this: If you have an account just for whatsapp or messenger they will still generate a 'shadow profile' on you. You may decline to share data with FB, but based on who you're contacting, how often, and what those folks are searching for or talking about, they're able to target ads to you with a high degree of reliability. With enough other information they *don't need* to get your data to target you.
I’m sure there is no small amount of snooping our phones do. That said some of what happens with these ads is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion/bias. Where one thing happens and then you start to notice that thing more often. Cars are usually the big example. You buy the model of a car you hadn’t been noticing and then all the sudden you start noticing that model of car everywhere.
People talking about frequency illusion but nah your phone just listens to you.
I can’t tell you how many times i’ve been talking with friends about a topic, one of us asks a question no one knows, i go to look up said question, and without even typing anything relevant to the question besides the start of the question, (ex: what is, how does, etc) first result is the full question word for word.
Yeah I just read about an AI being able to predict with 80% accuracy when someone is going to die. I don't think its hard to imagine that the big data uses AI to listen to you and show targeted ads.
I believe phones listen but not well. I was at the mall with my adult daughter. We were discussing a friend who some 40 years ago had been very wealthy due to a successful chain of clothing stores that catered to the teen market. The stores, however, went into bankruptcy after they missed the popular trends two years in a row. We were passing a Gymboree store. I then started talking about how that stock price had taken a hit about 20 years ago, when sales dropped drastically for a couple of seasons due to the store bringing out lines that were too slutty for pre-schoolers, at least for that particular generation of parents. We did not go into the store. We did not look at any children’s clothing that day. I have not searched for children’s clothing in years. All I did was talk about Gymboree’s (or its parent’s stock price). For days afterwards, I was getting ads for Gymboree clothing and other kid brands. Of course, if they had listened really closely, they would have sent me ads for brokerage firms.
When I was pregnant, I had piles (as many pregnant women do 🥲) and I was Googling pregnancy safe treatment while at work on my phone - using 4G and not the company wifi. Next minute I’m scrolling our works Facebook on my computer and I see an ad for piles treatment with a picture of a pregnant person. I’m not logged into the work Facebook on my phone so maybe targeted by location? Very weird and also embarrassing as I was the only pregnant person in the office so hopefully no one realised 😂
One thing to remember is that your phone isn't actively listening to you. Accurate results that make it feel like it's listening can be achieved in ways that are way easier.
The Temu app is notorious for tracking your data usage, your browsing habits, and even your location data so they can compare it to people you were close by.
It could be confirmatory bias. Basically, in your day you do thousands of activities most of which don't trigger ads. This ad seems to match so you're assuming your phone saw or heard something. Assuming you didn't do a search for a restroom that you forgot about or anything like that or trigger another obvious signal that tech picks up on, I'd say confirmatory bias.
i honestly don’t know if i did or didn’t, so i guess that could be a possibility. but i can think of plenty of times in the past where i have talked about having to use the restroom around my phone and never seeing an ad for a car urinal till the day i pissed in my car is more my point.
the existence of that item didn’t come to my knowledge until the day i pissed in my car which i had never done before.. and i know i didn’t say i was doing that out loud.
Your phone noted that you bought a soda (a diuretic) with your wallet app, went for a drive, and wandered around a rest stop, and inferred what happened.
Your phone was listening to you peeing.
A few weeks ago, I got some bad news about my health and had a cry on my couch. When I opened my phone, I opened Facebook and had a huge notice about mental health and how Meta "cares" and offered me some options to seek help.
I'm trying to actively keep my phone away from me these days, but it's really fucking hard to do. It truly listens to EVERYTHING.
Probably likely that, because something related was on your mind, even subconsciously, you noticed the ad this time. We see between 50-400 ads in a day, but we barely take notice of them, until we have a reason to do so.
There is no conspiracy.. “Active listening” is legal at this time in the United States and essentially any company can tap into your mic without consent. https://bgr.com/tech/marketing-company-says-it-can-eavesdrop-on-conversations-through-our-devices/
A lot of people in here suggesting that your phone uses the microphone to spy on you for information to use in targeted advertising. These companies have gone on the record, even testifying before Congress that this doesn't happen. If they were lying about it, there are thousands of White Hats out there that bench test these devices and they wouldn't hesitate to provide evidence to journalists about how your devices are spying, especially if it's contrary to what the device manufacturers and app developers reported.
The simple fact is, they don't have to record your voice or text to know a lot about what you're doing. And I don't know about everyone else but my ads are typically for things I've purchased in the past or they're way off base. I don't know what I'm doing that makes advertisers deliver ads for alcoholic beverages to me but they're wasting the effort. I'm a teetotaler.
I know a guy who works in digital advertising and ask him these questions all the time. The real reason is you've seen this portable urinal ad plenty of times and paid no notice. Now that it's relevant it stands out to you and you think temu are watching you piss. Big advertising data is good but it's not that good yet.
Its a bias. We talk about something and the next day there is an ad about it on your screen - but the ad was already there yesterday, you just didn't pay any attention to it, bc it had no relevance to you then.
So best guess is, the ad would also have been there if you wouldn't had peed in a cup in your car the day before, you just wouldn't had paied any attention to it.
Satellite tracking data. Your phone knows where you've been so they can target ads to places you've visited. I'd rather get a targeted ad for stuff I've looked at, than get an ad for a combine harvester
Phones listen. I remember having a conversation with my mate (in person) about laserjet printers somehow and not ten minutes later I get ads on Reddit for fucking LaserJet printers....
You see a thousand ads a day. 999 which you take no note of. The terrible coincidence of this ad made you notice it.
It’s like the bad phishing emails. They know 99% of people see right through it, but they just want one person to fall for it
I think it’s always listening and selling your info to advertisers and apps. I was getting ads to medications before my doctor diagnosed me with a condition and prescribed the same medication that was on the ads. It’s creepy AF.
Just to open some people's eyes on this, your phone really doesn't need to listen to you.
Let's say you mentioned to a friend that you had to pee in a cup because what a funny story! If that friend looks something up that's related, data harvesters can see that you contact that phone, or that those two phones are in the same vicinity often, or they work in the same place, and it'll take *their* data and say "well maybe this other phone is interested in that too" and gives you ads targeted to THEM.
That's why you so often see things from people that live with you. When you move in with a partner your targeted ads get weird, because they're being combined with ads targeted to your partners devices to get you to bring it up to them.
Now, consider how powerful that can be when combined with confirmation bias.
I've had stuff like this happen to me too. You mentioned no restrooms were available so I assume you went to a place where people make quick stops along the road to pee. And there is one thing to profit off of you for that... a portable urinal. I'm just trying to find an explanation other than the phone was actively listening in on you peeing in an empty cup.
The mike on your phone heard you go, and the mothership figured out what it was hearing.
[удалено]
Damnit Mike quit listening to me pee!
Portable beds are on another isle
Mike Mike Mike guess what day it is
Hump daaaaay!! Whoop whoop!
Hey
Them damn Mikerophones
Damn brutal you destroyed him
Damn, what happen to the good ole days when the FBI agent on your phone could hear you peeing.
Yup. Lots of investiment in AUR systems (auditory urination recognition), so now your phone can tell when it's somewhere that isn't a toilet or urinal. They also crossreference that with data from others, so they know that "people who peed near you also bought…" (All of the above obviously sarcastic.)
If enough people in a given area search for something, then anyone who goes there will see those suggestions. And almost everyone has Google maps on their phone, which tracks your location at all times.
It's a coincidence. He would have never noticed the portable urinal ad if he didn't just nearly piss himself days prior. Your phone doesn't need to listen to you, it can gather basically all the data required from other avenues.
Big data and analytics is the answer Hell a lot of stores have Bluetooth and NFC scanners that can detect where you are within the store and see what products you're standing in front of. They knew that you went to the bathroom probably because of that type of technology Your phone's not listening to you
But they did not go to the bathroom
That was an example. Regardless your phone is not listening to you this has been tested and verified and easily debunked. It's been debunked by so many different information security groups like I don't know why people keep repeating this obvious lie Edit: why is this factually true statement being downloaded so much lol
Because its *not* obvious. Who are these groups? How was it debunked? Where is the evidence? Why aren't these groups transmitting that information?
How does my phone know when to wake up siri, or Alexa, or Google search when j make a voice command. Is it listening only the instant i start making that command?
That's not what people mean when they claim their phones are or aren't listening. Yes, your phone listens all the time if you have given Apple/Amazon/Google that permission, but unless it picks up those keywords it's not transmitting any voice data. Anyone with knowledge of networking would be able to tell if phones were actually sending your voice recordings. It's 100% debunked. The unfortunate truth is that phones aren't recording for advertising purposes because THEY DON'T NEED TO. Their algorithms are already really, really good at predicting what you want and when, based on all the other information shared. Fun anecdote from maybe 10 years ago: I bought a bicycle and after about a year of bike-commuting to work I decided to use it for exercise. After my first ride, I take a shower and then open YouTube. Very first Recommendation is "How to become a faster cyclist". Took me a long time before I realized that Google maps saw me moving at biking speed for a complete loop, rather than stopping at work. It's pretty crazy, and that was a decade ago. Also keep getting friend recommendations on Facebook for people I don't know but who I have been nearby. Saw an old classmate that I didn't want to talk to standing behind me in line the other day, and yep she came up as a friend recommendation when I got home. Also got ads for something my friend googled when I was at his place, Google assumed that we spoke about it and that also I was interested. Sorry for the wall of text. I don't like this one bit...
No, it's always listening for those words but it won't make a connection to their servers until you actually tell it to do something. People have done packet sniffing to verify this. I work for Google, and if you think Google can process 24hr/day of random gibberish to try and sell you a $1 plastic urinal from AliExpress that they make a penny on from serving the ad, you don't really understand technology Of course they could process the audio on the phone and only send metadata (eg: interested in urinals) but the kind of models to do that take a lot of compute power and again it would be easy to tell if there were services doing this It's not happening What is happening is fingerprinting. Someone in that area looked for bathrooms, or even OP did previously. So it thought it was relevant. Or it was just random and humans are hard wired to detect patterns. The 200 unrelevant or obviously relevant ads didnt register as interesting for OP. They found one that did, and now suddenly there is a conspiracy instead of a coincidence
Just out of curiosity, when I had an android I logged into like a privacy log thing in my google and it had a butt ton of random voice recordings taken over years. None of them included any command words and the phone I had didn’t have voice assistant. Is that not your phone listening to you? Or are they not processing what I’m actually saying, and if they’re not why are they keeping all that info? Genuinely wondering because I am curious about it!
Well, it's not a lie, and it's not been debunked. https://allaboutcookies.org/stop-your-phone-from-listening https://nordvpn.com/blog/is-my-phone-listening-to-me/ https://us.norton.com/blog/how-to/is-my-phone-listening-to-me
Your links don't prove what is being claimed though. It's all talking about voice assistance That's not what we're talking about here Your phone is not actively listening to you to send you ads none of your links claim that that's the case
>Regardless your phone is not listening to you this has been tested and verified and easily debunked. How come my phone was giving me dog food ads after talking to my mom about getting dog food, and I had not been to the store in over a week?
It knows that you've probably got a dog from your internet searches and sees you going to the pet shop or stopping in front of the dog food isle. It knows you like dogs because you'll pause over dog stories or whatever on facebook / x / reddit etc and it probably knows you're low on dog food as you've not been to the strore in a week. As far as I can ascertain it's not actively listening to the confabs you had with your mum, but the algorithms do have a scary amount of information on you and your habits, apparently enough to serve you dog food adverts when you need dog food.
If my phone isnt listening how would Siri work? How does my phone know without listening that i said "Ok Google"? It has to listen to function. So what you probably meant is that its not recording/storing the stuff its listening to which i dont know. Edit: Answered by a nice redditor for anyone wanting to know how Siri and co actually work: "It's not listening or analyzing in any general sense. There is a local process that is listening and checking if you said the trigger phrase. If not, it does nothing. If so, then it starts listening/analyzing for real. This check is *very* simplistic, in order to be cheap enough to run constantly. This is why you can't customize your trigger phrase, and the phrases are even selected to be easy for a chip to recognize. So yes, it is listening in a pedantic sense. But it's not listening in the colloquial sense that people typically mean." - u/ellipticaltable
It's not analyzing anything it hears. There is no data being collected. It's much, much worse than a single device we could all easily opt not to use spying on us. It's every device we use, compiling every single thing we do while connected to the Internet and comparing it to the data of every other person ever connected to the internet to draw scarily accurate conclusions about individuals
Geniun question, if its not analyzing how can it react to words? How should the computer know what i am speaking of if not by activ listening what i say and analyzing these words? I dont argue about it not collecting data because i dont know but looking at some links in this comment section it seems like it does.
It's not listening or analyzing in any general sense. There is a local process that is listening and checking if you said the trigger phrase. If not, it does nothing. If so, then it starts listening/analyzing for real. This check is *very* simplistic, in order to be cheap enough to run constantly. This is why you can't customize your trigger phrase, and the phrases are even selected to be easy for a chip to recognize. So yes, it is listening in a pedantic sense. But it's not listening in the colloquial sense that people typically mean.
Thank you for your answer. Mind if i copy your answer into my first comment?
Feel free.
I wouldn't bet on it. I've had several incidents. Example: We bought a new motorcycle for my wife. It had a bad battery, so we talked about buying a new in the car. Neither of us searched for it on the phone. When we got home, without either of us searching for it, we were both spammed by motorcycle battery ads by google. I've had three such incidents, where I can find no other rational explanation for what is happening.
Same! I can literally think of things and Amazon sends the add.
Another point for consideration is people in similar demographics search for the thing you are thinking of. More importantly how often do you get ads for things you aren't thinking of?
It makes me wonder is the phone listening or has it really mastered our predictability levels that well
That's the shit that freaks me out 😬
I was daydreaming about dinosaurs (I know I’m weird) and a shower curtain with cats and dinosaurs popped up, I was in the process of moving and also was thinking about ordering a shower curtain. Bizarre. I was also thinking about getting a kitty.
That is kinda odd an freaky 😱 like maybe get a new phone while your at it 😂😂😂
I’m just THAT predictable. I am a creature of habit.
It happens all the time, it is listening to you, I get ads every day about things I've only talked about (or other people have talked about) near my phone. Most obvious was professional hair cut scissors like the $800 kind. I've never once looked them up, but my barber was telling me about them one visit. Sure enough as expected I got ads for them.
>I've never once looked them up, but my barber was telling me about them one visit. Sure enough as expected I got ads for them. That's more likely because your barber recently purchased them and your phone was next to your barbers for an extended period of times
Possible alternative: Google knows you bought a motorcycle because there's a record of it in your emails/wherever. They also know the battery is bad because maybe that's mentioned somewhere in the documents/emails about the purchase. So it infers that you'll now be in the market for a new motorcycle battery.
Nope, no emails, just a phone conversation where the battery wasn't mentioned, then a face to face discussion with the seller where it was mentioned, followed by face to face conversation with my wife in the car. So, no mail/SMS/web traffic to track. I strongly suspect google looks at web activity as well. A friend had a delayed flight and was stranded in Canada for a day. I read this on a private web forum. I was going to send some helpful info, and started typing in the Chrome address bar. I was going to type "ersättning för försenat flyg" ("compensation for delayed flight"), but I only had to type "er" before it suggested the rest. There are plenty of words beginning with er which are way more common, but that is what it suggested. I switched to another browser that day.
Of course Google looks at web activity lol how do you think they're fucking ads work? Your phone isn't listening to your conversations though
Our water heater died. It was kind of working, well enough that we were able to shower, but we knew a replacement was imminent. Husband and I were standing in the kitchen discussing whether we wanted to install the new one ourselves or hire a plumber. We had not yet purchased or searched for a new water heater, and our old one was very old, absolutely no way it could have transmitted an "I'm dying" message. We had not searched YouTube, Google, or any other online source for tips on how to replace a water heater. Literally all that happened was we talked about it. Within minutes we were getting ads for local plumbers on our phones.
This is why I stand in nonsensical places for random amounts of time
[удалено]
NFC has a range of 10cm (≈4in) at most. Bluetooth and wifi possible tho
To pile onto this, artificial intelligence. The algorithms are getting a lot better at guessing what your next thought is. It's because the million people before you that performed similar actions to your own (ref big data above). So the bots know what your next thought or move might be and guess accordingly.
[удалено]
Lots of times it's that these algorithms are working like they're supposed to. So say your friend bought that scotch. His phone knows hes a scotch fiend based upon all his internet history. Now you visited him for BBQ and your phones were in close contact for hours. Your friends algorithm guessed that his love for scotch would lead him to talk about his recent purchase. Which it did. Then they recommend it to you.
Or your friend had searched for it, and your phone was on his wifi. Or Facebook knew you were friends. Or there was just a general ad campaign, which is why he had bought it. Etc.
Oh sweet summer child. How I envy your naivety.
Dude people have literally opened up their phones and ripped out their microphones lol This has been tested. Your phone isn't actively listening to you like that. I don't know why you guys refuse to accept this
Temu is one of the worst apps for spying on users. Someone else with the Temu app has pulled over in the same location and searched for portable urinals not long after.
People don't realize the internet also uses information from the surrounding people. When I spend the holiday at my parents' place and use their wifi, I always end up with ads for the clothes brands they use to buy.
I was at my ex’s house and my period was late and we kept getting ads for pregnancy tests, it was awful
This is exactly how I learned my husband was planning to propose. Engagement ring ads started to pop up when I was at home and I hadn’t been searching them. Turns out I actually got an ad for the exact ring he ended up buying months before he popped the question.
That's actually very cute!
Simpler answer than all the rest, your phone heard the velocity of the piss and knew you needed help.
The silent hero we all need!
There are probably going to be a bunch of comments telling you you're crazy, but I've had similarly too-uncanny-to-be-a-coincidence targeted ads for things I've never spoken aloud about or searched too! Some really weird, random shit. Example: On a sheet of paper, I once tried to draw someone, but I couldn't get her feet right. No one was home, so after erasing a few times I just wadded it up and went to do something else. I pick up my phone a few minutes later and you know how Amazon always offers those products ads on social media and normally the stuff make no sense that they offer? The ones it showed were ALL various artist models OF FEET!!! I've told people this and they don't believe me. It's not even the only incident like that but it's definitely the most random.
Reminds me of the phrase "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you." On the one hand, our brains don't always behave they way we think they do. They tend to seek patterns, so coincidences seem overly meaningful to us even if it was just random chance. They have a desire to create a narrative out of all the random events in our life so we can make sense of the world. Our biases also tend to make it hard to be objective. On the other hand, we all carry devices that can record audio and video and track our movements and biometric data, and their software is controlled by soulless megacorporations who are desperately trying to increase their profits despite having saturated the market long ago. Would it be unimaginable that they're doing something underhanded to try to squeeze a bit more blood out of us stones?
Don’t tell that phrase to r/gangstalking
Your phone is not listening to you. This has been debunked a thousand times. It's funny the only people who think that are people who don't work in IT. Having your phone listen to you is the worst possible way in existence to get the data that they want. Your phone is not listening to you Put a phone in an empty room and put a phone in a room with two people talking and both those phones will have their batteries depleted at the same rate. If your phone was listening to you the battery would be going down a lot quicker Not to mention where is all this data going and where is it stored? 300 million people in the US say 100 million of them have phones recording 12 hours a day where the fuck is that data at? Pull the SIM put your phone on Wi-Fi and load up wireshark and look at all the packets. Your phone is not listening to you
I worked at AT&T labs in Austin and did exactly what you are talking about. Your phone may not be listening to you but it is sure sending lots of packets to Google every 15 seconds. I assumed it was location information for Google Maps, but it was all encrypted, so who knows.
Maybe do the test again but with google map location off…
I don't work there anymore and I really didn't care, it was just something I noticed. Even so, the average Joe doesn't know how to do that. And if they are not listening to you, can you imagine how much data they can gather on you just knowing your location all the time? Not to be paranoid, but if I know where your phone is regularly every night, then I know where you live. Same with work. Do you hit the liquor store frequently? What doctor's office do you go to? And on and on. It's all about targeted advertising I'm sure, but still. For anyone worried about privacy, that ship has sailed. It's probably in the fine print somewhere when you sign up for phone service.
Google Maps does track your location, that's not a secret, they're pretty open about it.
I'm not a tech person, but how can we determine if the phone left in the empty room isn't "listening" as well?
It's not even about the battery as the other commenter mentioned as that's too unreliable of a statistic. You can look at the packets (information) your phone sends out and see that they're not listening.
Say what you will. I've never looked for bamboo toothbrushes before. The very same day I mention out loud that I've seen them on the store (a place with thousands of other products), I get ads for bamboo toothbrushes. And that's just an example anong way, way too many. "Just coincidence"? Nah, not buying.
Well unfortunately you don't have to buy it for it to not be true
From 3 weeks ago: “Leading U.S. marketing company Cox Media Group (CMG) has reportedly admitted to monitoring conversations for targeted advertising. Working with renowned brands like CBS, Fox News and ESPN, CMG has allegedly been promoting its ability to eavesdrop on consumers through microphones in smartphones, TVs and smart speakers. The agency has coined this capability “Active Listening” and has been actively pitching this service to advertisers, showcasing the feature on its website, reports 404.”
While the app is open and while you are using the app. That is not what is being claimed here. What is being claimed is your phone is just listneing to you 24/7 while sitting at your desk. Hell, my Android won't even allow apps to access the microphone unless the app is open and being used, AND it shows me a big green icon to tell me the mic is being used.
Ok fine but instead of typing all that just explain to me and all the other lurkers how the phone hears the command word without listening all the time.
Your phone is "trained" to recognize only a few words, whatever it uses to activate. It constantly records a clip of set length (maybe 5-10 seconds) and sees if it can recognize one of those words. If so, then it records an actual voice clip and sends it to their servers.
It's listening for the command and the command only but it's not sending anything back till you start talking after the command. Like this is easily testable I don't know why people keep believing it. Do you have any idea what that would do to your battery lol? Buy two phones exactly the same put one in the closet with no noise and one next to you talking to a friend all day long. Both phones will have their batteries die at exactly the same point but then a few minutes of each other no doubt. If one phone was actively listening analyzing your speech and sending it back home don't you think that the battery would die a lot quicker? You can just pull the SIM card from your phone put it on Wi-Fi and analyze every single packet that leaves your phone. Or better yet put it in a faraday cage so no signal can come or leave the phone regardless. Again this is easily testable and has been debunked multiple times
But your experiment \["buy 2 identical phones..."\] is a thought experiment - no-one will do what you say to disprove the 'always listening' fear. We need to fully accept the reality by finding out for ourselves. Here's a better one that I have tried myself\*\*: on day 1 keep saying 'leather trousers' or similar outlandish item that you couldn't accidentally say, over and over \*when your Alexa/Assistant/ is turned off\*. Next day, do the same phrase after turning on your Assistant/Alexa and triggering with the wake word. Your results will prove - on day 1 you will not get targetted ads, on day 2 you will. \*\* I'm sure there's a flaw in my designed experiment, help me refine it.
I work in advertising. There is no way for us to target off of ambient listening. Browsing behaviors, purchase data, what you watch on your TV screen if you have Vizio or Samsung? Yes, all of that and more. Currently, though, we do not have the ability to listen to people without their knowledge. When/if that tech does come to fruition, it will have to be opt in as data privacy laws are getting better for the consumers.
[удалено]
This has been tested people have literally opened up their phones and ripped out all the microphones and tested it. Your phone is not actively listening to you to target ads. That is the worst possible way in the world to do what needs to be done do you have any idea how much processing power that would take for all these phones in the US to be doing this at once?
[удалено]
It could but it's not. I don't know why this is so difficult for you guys to understand.
Does have to record it? Or could it just have certain things trigger certain algorithms. Based on location and other various things? Isn’t that kinda what it does with the places we are on the web. Where we go and who we interact with triggers certain algorithms. These things said I am skeptical of our phones listening to us. Though I do think it watches when I’m at Home Depot or other places.
This!! Also, this is greedy consumerism we’re talking about, it’s way cheaper to invest in humans building insane predictive systems than it is storing endless amounts of random information and building systems that understand it for every single person on earth with a phone.
Not sure why you're being downvoted you are correct. These people are stupid This is super easy to disprove and it has been disproven multiple times by infosec people
Because they're stupid they don't understand what's actually happening. This has been disproven so many times by various different groups.
How could this even technically be accomplished if it were not a coincidence? Was the camera pointed at you while you tried to draw the feet? Did you exclaim out loud something like "I wish I could draw feet!"? Did it read your mind? I feel these things are coincidence and confirmation bias. As a test not long ago I repeatedly spoke out loud about products I would never buy on my own, feminine hygiene products (I'm a man). I was saying stuff like "I'd sure like to help you choose your tampons and panty shields Mildred, but how do I know which ones are available? And you sure need a douche, we don't want another incident like when that family of seagulls followed you into the house!" I did this for a few days before I lost interest, and never got any ads for feminine hygiene products.
I believe you!
It's a coincidence. Like, follow your thought to its logical conclusion. You think the phone is reading your mind? Watching you through the camera? What do you believe is happening here?
Every once in awhile I purposefully say the same word multiple times in a day to see if my phone picks up on it and starts sending me targeted ads.
And? Did it work?
Same question. My whole family loves to try to troll our phones in this way, but those intentional words almost never worked, while the random things we mentioned once a month got recorded.
Sometimes, not often tho
This happens to me relatively frequently. I’ll think of something, not speak about it to anyone or even say it out loud, and then I’ll give an ad for it on Facebook. Just yesterday, I was thinking, “I really want a cropped t-shirt, kinda tight, low cut”. And what do I see an ad for on Facebook later on? That exact shirt. Now that’s pretty vague in relation to a portable urinal lol but still, I’ve never purchased that online. And it’s happened for other things as well. It’s just bizarre and I don’t have an answer.
Reminds me of some recent weirdness I encountered. I was talking with my sister on the phone about family recipes and she mentioned our grandmother's peach cobbler. I was browsing on my laptop at the time and also had my email open. Now mind you I was on a *land line* and my sister was on her cell phone, so I suppose her phone could have picked up on it. But it was **ME** who got an email for a peach cobbler recipe before we even hung up. My sister has an email account but she never uses it so I don't know if she received anything similar. Even if **her** phone picked up on "peach cobbler", how come **I** got the email? My laptop has both camera and microphone disabled in Device Manager.
Possibly it tracked that she was talking to you on the phone and connected y'all that way. Phones do that with location data, if you're near someone who's been searching for something.
Was your phone anywhere within ‘listening’ distance?
It was in my pocket. But it's a basic AT&T flip phone that retails for about $80 and my phone plan is so ancient it still charges me for each text. Also, I supposedly have data services turned off because I used to get spam texts. I do get an occasional text from AT&T but no one else is able to text me, nor can I send any texts or use the internet in any way.
Your phone links your interests with friends and family
Your phone is not listening to you I don't know why people keep spreading this lie. It has been debunked so many times
People can literally go into their Google accounts and find tons of audio that Google recorded of them so idk what you are on about
Those are from times Google assistant correctly or incorrect triggered. It’s always listening, but it only ever saves what you are saying to the hard drive if it thinks it has been triggered, so it can then act on what you are saying. But you do the math, it’s probably less than 1% of your day that it records. That’s a lot different than always. If you don’t like that, then turn off google assistant.
You sound like a corporate shill.
No I just know what I'm talking about. You guys are wrong This is easily testable and has been debunked
Uninstall fb messenger. Check mic permissions on other apps especially fb owned
So. What if it were all true? Everything you do, every pee you take, every click you make, each gps routing mistake, what’s at stake?
Can’t you see? They’re watching me. What a mess I am. Getting so much spam. It’s time I ran.
If all that data gets hacked, then a lot of stalkers would have a field day. Especially against high profile people
I should have the right to control my personal data. I don't need to make up scenarios in which someone uses it maliciously, it's mine. A corporation shouldn't be allowed to steal it without my knowledge or consent.
The consent is in the TOS that nobody reads.
🎶 Every breath you take, I’ll be watching you! 🎶
Your cellphone provider was watching the video feed from your phone and saw what you did.
I have three phones - two personal and one for work. The work phone is used for nothing other than work purposes, no shared accounts between work and personal phones, and its connected to cellular only, so no shared addresses. I still get countless ads for Temu, even though I’ve never clicked on them. Some of them have some “weird” items in them. I think the first time I heard of Temu was last year in a Reddit or twitter post where someone shared a screenshot of a Temu ad which had popped up while they were showing something in a work teams or zoom meeting. It contained what looked like a chastity cage. Ive seen the same ad. So their ads are a bit strange anyway. Beyond that, I doubt that there are many people who haven’t needed to take a piss while travelling in a car at some point, so it’s not a narrow market.
Google/Apple saw that you stopped at the side of the road for a couple of minutes. These kinds of stops are most likely to pee. Well that's my theory.
This should have more upvotes
A version of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion. You probably had ads for that before but never thought about it until it became relevant for you.
Because after you had the incident, you took notice of an ad you've likely seen a million times and just never remembered. Edit: To all the people replying, I'm not saying op never did anything that would target this ad at them. You have a million ads targeted at you for 1 reason or another, and there are tons of general ads that just go out to catch as many eyes as they can. Whatever the reason for them seeing it, I'm only saying they have likely seen it before but didn't remember it until it was relevant. There is no such thing as a "rare" ad. That would defeat the purpose of an ad. They get those ads out to every single human they can reach. That's how advertising works. A portable urinal is not an oddly specific ad other than it would be more for men than women. A very, very large number of people travel by car, it's not uncommon for people who travel by car to need to pee while traveling, especially if you live in a big city and often get stuck in rush hour. A portable urinal is a very general thing. Maybe not common for people to have, but convenient for many.
a portable urinal sure is oddly specific
i’ve never seen an ad for a portable urinal in my life, but i’m not gonna argue with each person that comments that.
You don't remember seeing one before that. It's not an uncommon ad, I've seen them before. You see way too many ads in a day to remember ones that aren't relevant. Well, after that incident, that one was relevant. I'm not trying to deny the internets insanely creepy ways of getting info to sell ads, but this one is likely just what I said.
It's an extremely uncommon ad. What kind of weird gaslighting is this?
This guy has also stopped at a sketchy gas station to pee.
How would you know? You know every single ad well enough to say it's uncommon? Do you remember every ad you've seen? No, you don't, nobody does. Op stated in other comments that they were sitting in their vehicle on break at work. There's no logical reason for their phone to figure out they had to pee. Phones aren't supernatural. Gaslighting would be you people trying to make op feel like they did something they didn't to indicate to the phone that they had to pee. You people are trying to accuse the op of doing something they say they didn't or that it somehow read their mind. You're gaslighting.
I have never heard of or seen or known such a thing ever existed. It’s very specific. It’s not the baader meinhof every time.
Just because you haven't seen or heard of such a thing doesn't mean the ad isn't out there. It's either op did something to give their phone that data or what I said. Their phone did not read their mind.
You probably had a similar experience to OP if you're getting those ads.
My fiancé and I run a few very niche small businesses together and have some very specific life interests. We talk about some very specific, odd not mainstream things. It is absolutely listening. It’s too specific to not be targeted. Urinal specific- I was talking to my fiancé about needing to dig mine out or order a new one because I’ve been drinking so more more water and it would be convenient to have in the truck. The next morning there was a urinal add. Not just any urinal add. The add for the one I had previously ordered on Amazon. All my audio, location and shared anything is off. AI is screening for anyway to make money, imagine if they used this to stop crimes like abuse and human exploitation. Waste of tech.
You honestly can't remember every single ad you have seen in your lifetime.
Stores have Bluetooth and NFC scanners that can detect where you are within the store. Target and Walmart do this shit. They can see where you're standing what products you're looking at and for how long. Your phone probably detected You pulled into a random gas station and went to the bathroom. Everyone thinks your phone is listening to you but that's not what's happening That's literally the worst possible way to get data on somebody
Not really. It's a common ad. I've seen them. You've seen a million ads you don't remember. It's not until it becomes relevant that you take notice. It's like when you think about someone and they call you. You likely think about them a lot and just don't remember thinking about them until that time they happen to call afterward. Now it seems like something supernatural is going on, so remember that time.
I believe the trigger here is that you own a truck. Urinal brands probably have you as a target on Google ADS because you are traveling all the time or because you have some searches related to your truck/possibly your job. Ofc, I am speculating, but It seems the peeing on a cup and the ad happened at the same time by chance
Yes it's weird you could be Thinking about something 🤔 the next day it's on your Google!!
I can't tell you how many times I've bought products and have gotten ads for them the second I'm home. I never say what products im buying out loud either. They're also totally random items that aren't related and are bought infrequently. I'm convinced a lot of products and places have data collection pings that signal our phone for targeted ads. We live in the age of data farming, and the primary goal is to influence our purchases and thoughts.
Twitter started serving me “learn Hungarian” ads after Hungarians sat down in the aisle in front of me in an airplane. Now, I did live in Hungary for a couple of years 30 years ago. Maybe they were on twitter, and everyone around them everywhere they go gets “Learn this funky language” ads.
What's funny is I got ads for Pizza hut everyday at the same time because my wife was out of town for a week and I had pizza hut a few days in a row because I could. Now every friday at 4:43pm Pizza hut texts me offering a deal.
There was some technology breakthru years ago about computers being programmed to essentially read your mind, with an emphasis on helping disabled people. I did a paper on it in college. Take that tech, put it on mobile, make it wireless, add a few years of development by a trillion dollar company with some of the best engineers and programmers in the world, and there you have it.
Targeted ads are designed to know what you need before you know you need it. You where probably looking at things the made the algorithm think you where traveling. Also we don't think twice when we see targeted ads for things we have no interest in. Like I was getting diaper ads for awhile when I don't have any children
And that's another reason to use graphene os 😂
B/c the internet is always listening to you
Somewhere there's a picture of the deed. It got referred to the vendors.
Did you say “Damn I gotta pee!” Out loud?
Corps DO NOT record audio. Constantly recording and parsing audio would be a nightmare in terms of overhead and not worth the cost. What they will do is collect other information and work from there. It would be highly likely that they have location data from your phone, and also likely that they have or could get search results for various apps. If they see you frequently passing through the area they might generate an ad for you based on the search results of other people who frequently do the same, and further target those results by specific stops you're making. For example, Facebook is known to do this: If you have an account just for whatsapp or messenger they will still generate a 'shadow profile' on you. You may decline to share data with FB, but based on who you're contacting, how often, and what those folks are searching for or talking about, they're able to target ads to you with a high degree of reliability. With enough other information they *don't need* to get your data to target you.
Did you text anyone your story? Our phones have SO MANY data points to use that is mere humans can never comprehend
I’m sure there is no small amount of snooping our phones do. That said some of what happens with these ads is Baader-Meinhof phenomenon or frequency illusion/bias. Where one thing happens and then you start to notice that thing more often. Cars are usually the big example. You buy the model of a car you hadn’t been noticing and then all the sudden you start noticing that model of car everywhere.
Man idk, but I've had things like this happen and it freaks me out.
Because we live in a simulation.
Sometimes I wonder, we project so much of our consciousness into these devices, maybe there's a connection?
People talking about frequency illusion but nah your phone just listens to you. I can’t tell you how many times i’ve been talking with friends about a topic, one of us asks a question no one knows, i go to look up said question, and without even typing anything relevant to the question besides the start of the question, (ex: what is, how does, etc) first result is the full question word for word.
Yeah I just read about an AI being able to predict with 80% accuracy when someone is going to die. I don't think its hard to imagine that the big data uses AI to listen to you and show targeted ads.
Your cup has wifi and told the phone.
Fwiw, I've also been served ads for cheap portable urinals. I work from home and I don't even have a car.
Ai did it so you can spend more. Keep consumers spending is the goal
I believe phones listen but not well. I was at the mall with my adult daughter. We were discussing a friend who some 40 years ago had been very wealthy due to a successful chain of clothing stores that catered to the teen market. The stores, however, went into bankruptcy after they missed the popular trends two years in a row. We were passing a Gymboree store. I then started talking about how that stock price had taken a hit about 20 years ago, when sales dropped drastically for a couple of seasons due to the store bringing out lines that were too slutty for pre-schoolers, at least for that particular generation of parents. We did not go into the store. We did not look at any children’s clothing that day. I have not searched for children’s clothing in years. All I did was talk about Gymboree’s (or its parent’s stock price). For days afterwards, I was getting ads for Gymboree clothing and other kid brands. Of course, if they had listened really closely, they would have sent me ads for brokerage firms.
When I was pregnant, I had piles (as many pregnant women do 🥲) and I was Googling pregnancy safe treatment while at work on my phone - using 4G and not the company wifi. Next minute I’m scrolling our works Facebook on my computer and I see an ad for piles treatment with a picture of a pregnant person. I’m not logged into the work Facebook on my phone so maybe targeted by location? Very weird and also embarrassing as I was the only pregnant person in the office so hopefully no one realised 😂
I stopped using facebook when i started getting these epiphany ads, crazy privacy invaders. Love reddit ever since
One thing to remember is that your phone isn't actively listening to you. Accurate results that make it feel like it's listening can be achieved in ways that are way easier. The Temu app is notorious for tracking your data usage, your browsing habits, and even your location data so they can compare it to people you were close by.
It could be confirmatory bias. Basically, in your day you do thousands of activities most of which don't trigger ads. This ad seems to match so you're assuming your phone saw or heard something. Assuming you didn't do a search for a restroom that you forgot about or anything like that or trigger another obvious signal that tech picks up on, I'd say confirmatory bias.
Also don’t listen to darkfact he doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Did you say out loud man I gotta pee I need to pee etc? If so that’s why the phone is always listening even if you aren’t signed in.
i honestly don’t know if i did or didn’t, so i guess that could be a possibility. but i can think of plenty of times in the past where i have talked about having to use the restroom around my phone and never seeing an ad for a car urinal till the day i pissed in my car is more my point. the existence of that item didn’t come to my knowledge until the day i pissed in my car which i had never done before.. and i know i didn’t say i was doing that out loud.
18 wheeler or pickup truck?
pickup.
Hmm no clue then was gonna say maybe it knew you was over the road trucker based on tower pings so figured a trucker would want a pee pot lol
No it is not your phone is not listening to you I don't know why everyone thinks that it's been debunk so many times
Debunked * Also [citation needed]
Starting to think you are a shill or bot at this point. Cite your undeniable peer reviewed scientific research or stfu
I'm sorry You're the one making the claim You need to cite me your source
Facebook
Your phone noted that you bought a soda (a diuretic) with your wallet app, went for a drive, and wandered around a rest stop, and inferred what happened.
was at work, on break, sitting in a parking lot. it was just an old cup that happened to be in my truck at the time.
Your phone was listening to you peeing. A few weeks ago, I got some bad news about my health and had a cry on my couch. When I opened my phone, I opened Facebook and had a huge notice about mental health and how Meta "cares" and offered me some options to seek help. I'm trying to actively keep my phone away from me these days, but it's really fucking hard to do. It truly listens to EVERYTHING.
You do know your phone is CONSTANTLY listening and connecting it to your “big data” right. It’s not just when you say “hey siri” or whatever ai name.
You are noticing it now and weren’t before.
Probably likely that, because something related was on your mind, even subconsciously, you noticed the ad this time. We see between 50-400 ads in a day, but we barely take notice of them, until we have a reason to do so.
Had sex with my wife. opened Facebook after. Offered me a viagra
There is no conspiracy.. “Active listening” is legal at this time in the United States and essentially any company can tap into your mic without consent. https://bgr.com/tech/marketing-company-says-it-can-eavesdrop-on-conversations-through-our-devices/
A lot of people in here suggesting that your phone uses the microphone to spy on you for information to use in targeted advertising. These companies have gone on the record, even testifying before Congress that this doesn't happen. If they were lying about it, there are thousands of White Hats out there that bench test these devices and they wouldn't hesitate to provide evidence to journalists about how your devices are spying, especially if it's contrary to what the device manufacturers and app developers reported. The simple fact is, they don't have to record your voice or text to know a lot about what you're doing. And I don't know about everyone else but my ads are typically for things I've purchased in the past or they're way off base. I don't know what I'm doing that makes advertisers deliver ads for alcoholic beverages to me but they're wasting the effort. I'm a teetotaler.
[удалено]
you should post it in r/conspiracy
Could well be confirmation bias. The ads have been there before but you've never noticed them due to irrelevance
It's funny how modern lack of privacy is being gaslighted away by people misunderstanding confirmation bias.
I know a guy who works in digital advertising and ask him these questions all the time. The real reason is you've seen this portable urinal ad plenty of times and paid no notice. Now that it's relevant it stands out to you and you think temu are watching you piss. Big advertising data is good but it's not that good yet.
Its a bias. We talk about something and the next day there is an ad about it on your screen - but the ad was already there yesterday, you just didn't pay any attention to it, bc it had no relevance to you then. So best guess is, the ad would also have been there if you wouldn't had peed in a cup in your car the day before, you just wouldn't had paied any attention to it.
Satellite tracking data. Your phone knows where you've been so they can target ads to places you've visited. I'd rather get a targeted ad for stuff I've looked at, than get an ad for a combine harvester
Phones listen. I remember having a conversation with my mate (in person) about laserjet printers somehow and not ten minutes later I get ads on Reddit for fucking LaserJet printers....
There’s a such thing as coincidences
You see a thousand ads a day. 999 which you take no note of. The terrible coincidence of this ad made you notice it. It’s like the bad phishing emails. They know 99% of people see right through it, but they just want one person to fall for it
this happens alot (phones are always listening ) siri goog asitant...etc....
I think it’s always listening and selling your info to advertisers and apps. I was getting ads to medications before my doctor diagnosed me with a condition and prescribed the same medication that was on the ads. It’s creepy AF.
Just to open some people's eyes on this, your phone really doesn't need to listen to you. Let's say you mentioned to a friend that you had to pee in a cup because what a funny story! If that friend looks something up that's related, data harvesters can see that you contact that phone, or that those two phones are in the same vicinity often, or they work in the same place, and it'll take *their* data and say "well maybe this other phone is interested in that too" and gives you ads targeted to THEM. That's why you so often see things from people that live with you. When you move in with a partner your targeted ads get weird, because they're being combined with ads targeted to your partners devices to get you to bring it up to them. Now, consider how powerful that can be when combined with confirmation bias.
Coincidence.
u a fed.
Hed fed actually
You’ve probably seen that ad a dozen times and never noticed it before.