3 ms·

This happened to me in 2018. We were chatting with an acquaintance about horse racing. I never showed an interest in that topic or visited the location. Just af

This happened to me in 2018. We were chatting with an acquaintance about horse racing. I never showed an interest in that topic or visited the location. Just after 5 mins he left I received an ad from Instagram on Horse Racing competition which was happening in the same city. My only assumption was Instagram/Facebook was somehow listening our conversation.

Supermancho 4y ago
What's worse is that my wife and I were talking about particular states, then the spam calls we started to get had area codes from those states. Once is a coincidence. 5 times is a pattern. Since we don't leave any apps open on our Android phones, we assume it's because Google was listening (their version of Siri is Bixby, which we use from time to time) then selling that information. It was probably a one-off, since this was only for a short window of time (2 weeks), but it was blatant.
- ffhhj 4y ago
  I keep disabling Bixby permissions (x5 apps) and Android re-enables them on updates or whether I left some "allow to change system settings" checked, it's a huge information drainage.
- navjack27 4y ago
  > we don't leave any apps open So you force stop everything?
  - Supermancho 4y ago
    If we have to.
filoleg 4y ago
Were you friends with that acquaintance on fb/instagram? Were you on the same wifi/network? If the answer to either of those two is "yes", and if your friend googled or liked/followed horse racing content on instagram/fb, then the algo can easily determine that indeed you might be interested in it and recommend it to you. Requires zero horse racing related searches on your own devices, just requires a person with a first degree connection to you doing those searches. If the system knows that your close social link with some similar interests interacts (searching, reading, liking, following, chatting about online with others, etc.) a lot with a specific type of content, it is a pretty straightforward idea to suggest that specific type of content to you, even if you didn't interact with that type of content online yourself yet.

Supermancho 4y ago

What's worse is that my wife and I were talking about particular states, then the spam calls we started to get had area codes from those states. Once is a coincidence. 5 times is a pattern. Since we don't leave any apps open on our Android phones, we assume it's because Google was listening (their version of Siri is Bixby, which we use from time to time) then selling that information. It was probably a one-off, since this was only for a short window of time (2 weeks), but it was blatant.

ffhhj 4y ago
I keep disabling Bixby permissions (x5 apps) and Android re-enables them on updates or whether I left some "allow to change system settings" checked, it's a huge information drainage.
navjack27 4y ago
> we don't leave any apps open So you force stop everything?
- Supermancho 4y ago
  If we have to.

filoleg 4y ago

Were you friends with that acquaintance on fb/instagram? Were you on the same wifi/network? If the answer to either of those two is "yes", and if your friend googled or liked/followed horse racing content on instagram/fb, then the algo can easily determine that indeed you might be interested in it and recommend it to you. Requires zero horse racing related searches on your own devices, just requires a person with a first degree connection to you doing those searches. If the system knows that your close social link with some similar interests interacts (searching, reading, liking, following, chatting about online with others, etc.) a lot with a specific type of content, it is a pretty straightforward idea to suggest that specific type of content to you, even if you didn't interact with that type of content online yourself yet.