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Over the weekend my wife was saying how nice it would be to have a "hey google" that wasn't sending data to Google all the time. My wife is not a tech person, b

Over the weekend my wife was saying how nice it would be to have a "hey google" that wasn't sending data to Google all the time. My wife is not a tech person, but she was really creeped out be having a conversation with a daughter about music, and then having the artist my daughter mentioned show up in her YouTube music feed. Could have been coincidence... but...

mdp2021 4y ago
I never had to solve that problem in detail, but - check the software you have installed, linked in any way to a microphone, and its permissions, and all the "contracts" (licences) you may sign or have signed. Some who are spared from that phenomenon of eavesdropping have followed that path.
thomastjeffery 4y ago
It's more likely that the daughter played music from that artist on YouTube, and your public IP address was associated to it in YouTube's data. Still sketchy, just less mysterious.
- jbverschoor 4y ago
  Nah I have the same regularly when I only talk about things with a friend. I think devices are listening more than disclosed. I mean, you can hide it by doing the analysis on-device, and just sending some encrypted tag of a few bytes whenever there's an API message being sent. But it could just be a coincidence of course
  - jackson1442 4y ago
    that could also be a similar story- device proximity and contacts being used to infer common interests between two people. If someone's talking about a topic (even if it's a long-standing interest) it's highly likely they've searched for something related to it recently.
  - filoleg 4y ago
    > Nah I have the same regularly when I only talk about things with a friend. Sure, but did your friend google those things at any point (before or after your conversation)? Do you ever connect to the same wifi access points? Are your phones ever in physical proximity? Almost certainly your answer would be "yes" to most of those questions, which also explains how you get the suggestions about things you "only talked about" with your friend. I agree that this is not a coincidence, but the explanation is rather simple, really. If there is a user A who googles topic X, and there is another user B who appears to be their "social link" (via device proximity, occasionally utilizing same wifi access points, sending emails to each other, etc), it makes sense to suggest topic X to user B.
  - derekp7 4y ago
    Well, once I was making a peanut butter sandwich. Next ad I saw on my phone was for an organic brand of peanut butter. I never said or searched for anything related to that. So my theory is that the phone has an undisclosed odor sensor in it that is sending back data. My point being, that if you have a large enough data set then you can find all kinds of coincidences within that set. I.e., I'm sure you've heard of the comparisons between Lincoln and Kennedy (i.e., Lincoln was killed in the Ford theater, and Kennedy was killed in a Ford). This is also known as the Texas Sharpshooter's Fallacy.
  - cma 4y ago
    If your friend searches it, it can get recommendwd to you since they do social graph analysis.
  - inportb 4y ago
    Either devices are listening more than disclosed, or you're listening more than usual. Perhaps, after talking about things with your friend, you become more perceptive to similar things that occur in close temporal proximity.
  - fsckboy 4y ago
    > regularly when I only talk about things with a friend I've read the other good responses to what you've said, but nobody said this: it is very easy to become part of a trend or fad without realizing it. Like you could have an avocado toast at your local cafe and fall in love with avocado toasts without realizing that the cafe is already part of a national avocado toast trend. So you only talked about that avocado toast with one friend on your weekly wilderness hike, yet somehow google suggested you might like avocado toast. mentioning it because in this case there is no direct link, but it isn't coincidence either. So many things I've fallen in love with and taken up turned out to take off in a trend, but I didn't cause the trend nor notice that's how I heard about it.
Zurrrrr 4y ago
It probably saw the daughter accessed stuff from a home IP address so suggested stuff to every device on that same IP.
krunck 4y ago
And now due to this patent trolling the Googles of the world don't have to worry about people side stepping their surveillance and cutting into their profits. Not that there's a conspiracy. But it really sucks that these deeply entrenched mechanisms in our economy just keep taking freedom from surveillance away from people.
kevin_thibedeau 4y ago
It's not coincidence. Google does this with articles in the Android assistant when you do searches on a separate device. Everything that can be linked to a common owner will have ads blasted to it based on their consumer profiling.
PartiallyTyped 4y ago
N=1, i was talking to my father over Meta’s messenger about my plans for the future. I mentioned doing research in $Country, a visit to the grocery store later and the ads in my messenger app were for a research degree in $country. We were even speaking in a mixture of english and $language, and it still figured stuff out. Unfortunately i cant get my friends and family to adopt a more privacy friendly platform.

mdp2021 4y ago

I never had to solve that problem in detail, but - check the software you have installed, linked in any way to a microphone, and its permissions, and all the "contracts" (licences) you may sign or have signed. Some who are spared from that phenomenon of eavesdropping have followed that path.

thomastjeffery 4y ago

It's more likely that the daughter played music from that artist on YouTube, and your public IP address was associated to it in YouTube's data. Still sketchy, just less mysterious.

jbverschoor 4y ago
Nah I have the same regularly when I only talk about things with a friend. I think devices are listening more than disclosed. I mean, you can hide it by doing the analysis on-device, and just sending some encrypted tag of a few bytes whenever there's an API message being sent. But it could just be a coincidence of course
- jackson1442 4y ago
  that could also be a similar story- device proximity and contacts being used to infer common interests between two people. If someone's talking about a topic (even if it's a long-standing interest) it's highly likely they've searched for something related to it recently.
- filoleg 4y ago
  > Nah I have the same regularly when I only talk about things with a friend. Sure, but did your friend google those things at any point (before or after your conversation)? Do you ever connect to the same wifi access points? Are your phones ever in physical proximity? Almost certainly your answer would be "yes" to most of those questions, which also explains how you get the suggestions about things you "only talked about" with your friend. I agree that this is not a coincidence, but the explanation is rather simple, really. If there is a user A who googles topic X, and there is another user B who appears to be their "social link" (via device proximity, occasionally utilizing same wifi access points, sending emails to each other, etc), it makes sense to suggest topic X to user B.
- derekp7 4y ago
  Well, once I was making a peanut butter sandwich. Next ad I saw on my phone was for an organic brand of peanut butter. I never said or searched for anything related to that. So my theory is that the phone has an undisclosed odor sensor in it that is sending back data. My point being, that if you have a large enough data set then you can find all kinds of coincidences within that set. I.e., I'm sure you've heard of the comparisons between Lincoln and Kennedy (i.e., Lincoln was killed in the Ford theater, and Kennedy was killed in a Ford). This is also known as the Texas Sharpshooter's Fallacy.
- cma 4y ago
  If your friend searches it, it can get recommendwd to you since they do social graph analysis.
- inportb 4y ago
  Either devices are listening more than disclosed, or you're listening more than usual. Perhaps, after talking about things with your friend, you become more perceptive to similar things that occur in close temporal proximity.
- fsckboy 4y ago
  > regularly when I only talk about things with a friend I've read the other good responses to what you've said, but nobody said this: it is very easy to become part of a trend or fad without realizing it. Like you could have an avocado toast at your local cafe and fall in love with avocado toasts without realizing that the cafe is already part of a national avocado toast trend. So you only talked about that avocado toast with one friend on your weekly wilderness hike, yet somehow google suggested you might like avocado toast. mentioning it because in this case there is no direct link, but it isn't coincidence either. So many things I've fallen in love with and taken up turned out to take off in a trend, but I didn't cause the trend nor notice that's how I heard about it.

Zurrrrr 4y ago

It probably saw the daughter accessed stuff from a home IP address so suggested stuff to every device on that same IP.

krunck 4y ago

And now due to this patent trolling the Googles of the world don't have to worry about people side stepping their surveillance and cutting into their profits. Not that there's a conspiracy. But it really sucks that these deeply entrenched mechanisms in our economy just keep taking freedom from surveillance away from people.

kevin_thibedeau 4y ago

It's not coincidence. Google does this with articles in the Android assistant when you do searches on a separate device. Everything that can be linked to a common owner will have ads blasted to it based on their consumer profiling.

PartiallyTyped 4y ago

N=1, i was talking to my father over Meta’s messenger about my plans for the future. I mentioned doing research in $Country, a visit to the grocery store later and the ads in my messenger app were for a research degree in $country. We were even speaking in a mixture of english and $language, and it still figured stuff out. Unfortunately i cant get my friends and family to adopt a more privacy friendly platform.