6 ms·

It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was

It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads about it a few minutes to hours later.

DubiousPusher 6y ago
> I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. How do you know?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Network traffic and battery usage monitoring.
- mrweasel 6y ago
  It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. Implementation would require way to many people to keep it secret. I’m also not sure if it make finacial sense to implement, given the large number of more easily metrics available.
  - DubiousPusher 6y ago
    > It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. I used to believe that too. You might call it the unwieldy conspiracy principle. But I'm not as certain of it anymore. Things like the Snowden revelations might seem evidence for the principle but I kind of see it the opposite. For years, thousands even tens of thousands of people knew about that and they still kept it secret. It's entirely possible it could've gone on for years more without a particularly conscientious person happening to be let in on it. The same goes for the Pentagon papers. And COINTELPRO was only uncovered due to people actively breaking into an office and stealing records. Who's to say if stories like those are inevitable conclusions that befell all the major conspiracies worth writing about in our recent history or if they are just some portion of ones uncovered. Similar maleficence has persisted in the private sector too. I'm not saying for sure they are listening in but at the same time, I'm not sure I buy unwieldiness as a surefire principle demonstrating it is not happening either.
reader_mode 6y ago
> It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. The wierdest instance of this is I told my wife her father should consider geting those fixed bridge dentures, next day I start seeing all-on-4 ads on the phone. I asked her if she looked it up (to rule out IP tracking) and she said she hasn't. It's a very random thing to advertise to me, I'm not the target group, I didn't look it up. A lot of it is IP tracking - I'll start browsing for guitars or some other random stuff my wife has no interest in - she'll start seeing ads for it.
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Yeah but neither of us had searched for that or anything, and I use DDG and uBO so it's not likely it'd be tracked.
  - strogonoff 6y ago
    A friend demonstrated me this with her Google Pixel. We talked for a bit about a very conspicuous topic in presence of the phone, and the Google app (which shows a news feed when you open it) started showing articles relevant to the topic within a few minutes. At that point I believed her that her phone is listening, though I didn’t make a big deal of it because she did not make an effort to configure her phone not to.
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      I doubt they have such a good recognition model for Greek, plus my DNS blocks Google at that level, and I have a Xiaomi phone. Not that it's impossible, but it's less likely, plus the battery would die quickly.
      - strogonoff 6y ago
        I see. We talked in English, and there was no blocking.
goatinaboat 6y ago
I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads about it a few minutes to hours later. It's probably statistical to a certain extent: people of your specific demographic are interested in a certain thing, and you are talking about it the same as all of your peers are, and a statistically significant amount of your peers did Google for it such that now Google assumes that anyone in your demographic will be interested. Of course that only metas the problem up one level, which is that Google knows enough about you to do this kind of analysis a) on your cohort and b) on you.
- vcavallo 6y ago
  > Google knows enough about you [to not even have to bother listening] Right. This was is actually much more alarming to me. Whenever this topic comes up in conversation I point out that the fact that the most attractive-seeming explanation is “they’re listening”, but they actually _aren’t_, should have one even more concerned.
rapnie 6y ago
> I know my devices are (probably) not listening Not thinking this is happening either. But just to speculate on a fictitious scenario.. Given a shady company, maybe even outright involved in illegal practices, where employees employ any surveillance tech they can lay their hands on. All in order to collect as much personal information as possible, from as many people as possible. As such, they won't shy away from breaking & listening in and do subsequent speech-to-text information gathering (e.g. via some Ad-obtained Windows malware, or a malicious mobile app). They trade the collected info on the data markets, selling to anyone who'd pay. Wouldn't it be likely that this data then indirectly ends up at Google, so they can indeed target - in this case Voltaren - ads to you? Also: If any illegally obtained information enters the data markets.. won't it be 'whitewashed' automatically as it is trading hands?
- StavrosK 6y ago
  Sure, but I don't think they're listening from a technical standpoint, because the battery consumption is much less than an active network adapter would consume.
  - mysterydip 6y ago
    They could always either compress the audio or do a speech to text (looking for keywords rather than caring about getting the whole context correct), and batch upload the results on an interval (like when checking for email or app/system updates).
    - StavrosK 6y ago
      That would still absolutely kill the battery.
      - hetspookjee 6y ago
        Id reckon you can boil the model down to a very small one to extract some keywords and thatll be pretty good already. Just having the ability to hear if someone is talking would take very little battery, to consequently turn on the top-10000 word model would still be barely noticeable on these powerhouses of phones we got, I think. Haven't tested it, though.
geocrasher 6y ago
It might not be your mobile devices listening. Alexa? Smart TV? I've seen examples of this too, and it's downright creepy. At the same time, I love my Google Assistant. Yes, I know. I'm the product.
rkachowski 6y ago
You don't notice all the times you talk about something and you don't see relevant advertisements. After talking about it you're primed to notice it more. Additionally this isn't isolated - you could be talking about it indirectly due to advertisments being out there (e.g. someone else sees an ad, posts / talks / youtubes about it, you talk about it and then see the ad). Ads are getting more targeted and getting closer to the kind of things you would talk about based on your interests and data that networks have collected about you, but we are still pretty far from continuous ad surveillance.

DubiousPusher 6y ago

> I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. How do you know?

StavrosK 6y ago
Network traffic and battery usage monitoring.
mrweasel 6y ago
It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. Implementation would require way to many people to keep it secret. I’m also not sure if it make finacial sense to implement, given the large number of more easily metrics available.
- DubiousPusher 6y ago
  > It seems like one of those things that are simply to hard to keep secret. I used to believe that too. You might call it the unwieldy conspiracy principle. But I'm not as certain of it anymore. Things like the Snowden revelations might seem evidence for the principle but I kind of see it the opposite. For years, thousands even tens of thousands of people knew about that and they still kept it secret. It's entirely possible it could've gone on for years more without a particularly conscientious person happening to be let in on it. The same goes for the Pentagon papers. And COINTELPRO was only uncovered due to people actively breaking into an office and stealing records. Who's to say if stories like those are inevitable conclusions that befell all the major conspiracies worth writing about in our recent history or if they are just some portion of ones uncovered. Similar maleficence has persisted in the private sector too. I'm not saying for sure they are listening in but at the same time, I'm not sure I buy unwieldiness as a surefire principle demonstrating it is not happening either.

reader_mode 6y ago

> It's been a few times now where I've talked with my wife about some new product (physically, in the room) and she starts seeing ads about it. I thought that was the explanation too, but it's happened too many times for comfort. The wierdest instance of this is I told my wife her father should consider geting those fixed bridge dentures, next day I start seeing all-on-4 ads on the phone. I asked her if she looked it up (to rule out IP tracking) and she said she hasn't. It's a very random thing to advertise to me, I'm not the target group, I didn't look it up. A lot of it is IP tracking - I'll start browsing for guitars or some other random stuff my wife has no interest in - she'll start seeing ads for it.

StavrosK 6y ago
Yeah but neither of us had searched for that or anything, and I use DDG and uBO so it's not likely it'd be tracked.
- strogonoff 6y ago
  A friend demonstrated me this with her Google Pixel. We talked for a bit about a very conspicuous topic in presence of the phone, and the Google app (which shows a news feed when you open it) started showing articles relevant to the topic within a few minutes. At that point I believed her that her phone is listening, though I didn’t make a big deal of it because she did not make an effort to configure her phone not to.
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    I doubt they have such a good recognition model for Greek, plus my DNS blocks Google at that level, and I have a Xiaomi phone. Not that it's impossible, but it's less likely, plus the battery would die quickly.
    - strogonoff 6y ago
      I see. We talked in English, and there was no blocking.

goatinaboat 6y ago

I know my devices are (probably) not listening, but I can't explain it either. Neither of us searched for the product or saw it online or anything, we just discussed something and got ads about it a few minutes to hours later. It's probably statistical to a certain extent: people of your specific demographic are interested in a certain thing, and you are talking about it the same as all of your peers are, and a statistically significant amount of your peers did Google for it such that now Google assumes that anyone in your demographic will be interested. Of course that only metas the problem up one level, which is that Google knows enough about you to do this kind of analysis a) on your cohort and b) on you.

vcavallo 6y ago
> Google knows enough about you [to not even have to bother listening] Right. This was is actually much more alarming to me. Whenever this topic comes up in conversation I point out that the fact that the most attractive-seeming explanation is “they’re listening”, but they actually _aren’t_, should have one even more concerned.

rapnie 6y ago

> I know my devices are (probably) not listening Not thinking this is happening either. But just to speculate on a fictitious scenario.. Given a shady company, maybe even outright involved in illegal practices, where employees employ any surveillance tech they can lay their hands on. All in order to collect as much personal information as possible, from as many people as possible. As such, they won't shy away from breaking & listening in and do subsequent speech-to-text information gathering (e.g. via some Ad-obtained Windows malware, or a malicious mobile app). They trade the collected info on the data markets, selling to anyone who'd pay. Wouldn't it be likely that this data then indirectly ends up at Google, so they can indeed target - in this case Voltaren - ads to you? Also: If any illegally obtained information enters the data markets.. won't it be 'whitewashed' automatically as it is trading hands?

StavrosK 6y ago
Sure, but I don't think they're listening from a technical standpoint, because the battery consumption is much less than an active network adapter would consume.
- mysterydip 6y ago
  They could always either compress the audio or do a speech to text (looking for keywords rather than caring about getting the whole context correct), and batch upload the results on an interval (like when checking for email or app/system updates).
  - StavrosK 6y ago
    That would still absolutely kill the battery.
    - hetspookjee 6y ago
      Id reckon you can boil the model down to a very small one to extract some keywords and thatll be pretty good already. Just having the ability to hear if someone is talking would take very little battery, to consequently turn on the top-10000 word model would still be barely noticeable on these powerhouses of phones we got, I think. Haven't tested it, though.

geocrasher 6y ago

It might not be your mobile devices listening. Alexa? Smart TV? I've seen examples of this too, and it's downright creepy. At the same time, I love my Google Assistant. Yes, I know. I'm the product.

rkachowski 6y ago

You don't notice all the times you talk about something and you don't see relevant advertisements. After talking about it you're primed to notice it more. Additionally this isn't isolated - you could be talking about it indirectly due to advertisments being out there (e.g. someone else sees an ad, posts / talks / youtubes about it, you talk about it and then see the ad). Ads are getting more targeted and getting closer to the kind of things you would talk about based on your interests and data that networks have collected about you, but we are still pretty far from continuous ad surveillance.