Does Your Phone Spy on You?
We've all recently become aware of how Amazon Alexa and Google Home apps have been used to invade people's privacy and listen in on their conversations, and those of us who don't use those apps probably thought we were immune from that insidious invasion of our privacy but that isn't actually the case.
In our household we don't use any of those apps or even use the voice search facility on our mobiles. But recently it came to my wife's realisation that she was being targeted by ads on her phone specific to things she had simply been talking about. To be clear I do not mean things she had been talking about on her phone but merely conversations she had had face to face with someone, and where her phone just happened to be in close proximity in the same room.
I had read about this phenomenon but never actually personally experienced it, or at least never been personally aware of it and assumed it was only experienced by those who left themselves exposed as a result of their lack of of vigilance in other areas via their choice of apps or use of social media. Until it personally happens to you you don't realise how real this capability is.
The ads that were subsequenty targeted at my wife were specific to the subject matter of her face to face conversations and were not specific to anything she had done online searches for or even talked about during a conversation directly on her phone.
Has anyone else become aware of this happening to them?
I worry where all this is heading in the future as we seem to be heading for a "Big Brother is watching you" scenario as this technology is gradually exploited for even more nefarious purposes than merely targeting us with ads. How long will it be before they are not merely listening to us in our own homes but also watching us without our knowledge via our camera phone apps?
This is potentially extremely dangerous technology and in the wrong hands, not necessarily (yet) in the UK, poses a serious threat to people's human rights, freedoms and welfare.
https://www.narcity.com/news/theres...-about-but-havent-actually-searched-up-online
We've all recently become aware of how Amazon Alexa and Google Home apps have been used to invade people's privacy and listen in on their conversations, and those of us who don't use those apps probably thought we were immune from that insidious invasion of our privacy but that isn't actually the case.
In our household we don't use any of those apps or even use the voice search facility on our mobiles. But recently it came to my wife's realisation that she was being targeted by ads on her phone specific to things she had simply been talking about. To be clear I do not mean things she had been talking about on her phone but merely conversations she had had face to face with someone, and where her phone just happened to be in close proximity in the same room.
I had read about this phenomenon but never actually personally experienced it, or at least never been personally aware of it and assumed it was only experienced by those who left themselves exposed as a result of their lack of of vigilance in other areas via their choice of apps or use of social media. Until it personally happens to you you don't realise how real this capability is.
The ads that were subsequenty targeted at my wife were specific to the subject matter of her face to face conversations and were not specific to anything she had done online searches for or even talked about during a conversation directly on her phone.
Has anyone else become aware of this happening to them?
I worry where all this is heading in the future as we seem to be heading for a "Big Brother is watching you" scenario as this technology is gradually exploited for even more nefarious purposes than merely targeting us with ads. How long will it be before they are not merely listening to us in our own homes but also watching us without our knowledge via our camera phone apps?
This is potentially extremely dangerous technology and in the wrong hands, not necessarily (yet) in the UK, poses a serious threat to people's human rights, freedoms and welfare.
https://www.narcity.com/news/theres...-about-but-havent-actually-searched-up-online
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So you don't think it's possible she's ever googled something related to the subject or looked at something similar anywhere? Maybe it's a coincidence.
