Happens to my family all of the time. We noticed it last year after my husband and I had a drunken conversation about antique door knobs and the next day every ad online was for....antique door knobs. Random convo, never searched for anything related. Now, we just assume someone is listening and make suggestions for every day problems expecting the solution to be posted in an ad on Facebook next time we log in.

I play battlefront a lot and never have I looked anything up on at phone about it, I'm not that into star wars but I've noticed I get ads for light sabers and my instagram explore is full of battlefront compilation videos and starwars shit for me to follow.

They've been listening a lot lately

The Facebook App is extremely Orwellian

Spez: Android 6+ allows you to assign specific App permissions. Go through your apps and deny microphone / camera / others for every App.

I'll do you one better. Yes your phone listens and promotes "relevant" interests. But honest to god a thought i had been meditating on for a few hours and never verbalized, popped up in ads a few minutes later. Only happened once so far, and yes i believe synchronicity could be t play. But spooked for sure

I could go wayyy into detail about how I'm pretty sure I'm being listened to and fucked around with, but then I feel like they'd fuck with me even more.

Anyway, yeah it's happening.

They do it in so many ways now.

I could almost write a paper on this shit. It's interesting to me.

As well as being obvious. Not only from a profitability standpoint, but obviously from a manipulative and agenda standpoint as well. Or just from a simple information standpoint.

It's literally ALL connected. Facebook. Snapchat. Email. Debit card purchases. Internet search history. Audio from your microphone. Video from your camera. Gps signal. Wifi connection. Who's wifi you're connected to. Who you are sending a message to. Why. How long you talk. The context of the conversation. Where you were during, before, and after said conversation. What apps were used while the conversation... and so on and so forth.

And with the power of cloud computing and analytics, you can start to piece together BIG data.

Cross analyzing trends amongst other users by matching data points over a period of time.

Then, throw in a simple variable. Say for example.... oh idk... how about, withholding positive Facebook posts and only showing the negative ones.. and watching how that impacts absolutely everything else.

There is no stopping this now. We let this happen.

MAYBE. Maybe... if we stopped using the internet..

Your scenario has already occured. Facebook has admitted to researching their users in such a fashion back in 2014.

http://web.archive.org/web/20161222104338/http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/06/30/technology/facebook-tinkers-with-users-emotions-in-news-feed-experiment-stirring-outcry.html

Lolol I know. That's why I used it as an example.

Or maybe if we stopped using the sites that blatantly violate user privacy and data like... I dunno... Facebook..

Seriously, I did away with CIA book when I went thru my divorce because so many of my friends were my spouse's friends and I figured I'd start a new one when I got around to it. This was back in 2012.

Yes, sometimes I miss getting to see some family pics, but if I really want to see them I work it out by actually contacting that family member. But seriously, there is no amount of free service that makes me want to give up that amount of privacy. Not anymore.

I mean, yes. Definitely stop using Facebook. Glad to hear you did as well. Now if we could just get everyone else to stop too.. and bring that horrible person zuck back to just being a normal everyday person. That would be cool.

That said, the entirety of the internet is built of the backbone of the government.

Even tor browser is well known to not actually be private.

There is somewhat of a stalemate going on here. Criminal activity is completely monitored and tracked. Analyzed. Stored. Used.

The reason nothing is done about it or before, is because it will kill the effectiveness of. If TPTB took down a ring of criminals using the internet, they would be acknowledging that they are in fact listening at all times... then regular people would be scared. They would come to their senses and leave the internet alone.

But that isn't what they want. So it doesn't happen.

I noticed this a while back. My take on it is with data mining and big data, they can correlate so many things that often you have already "telegraphed" this yet to be had thought on-line or subconsciously in conversation by using pre-cursor keywords to the actual thought. In other words, the same pre-cursors keywords that eventually lead you to having the thought, before you have it, are correlated from existing data points and the same potential conclusion arrived at by automated systems as is arrived at by your brain.

Or it's magic thought stealing, which actually sounds more likely, after reading my weak-ass attempt to explain my logic above.

Whoa, that's nuts because I was just recalling yesterday how this has happened to me a few times. I've thought of something I needed to google, just typed the first and/or second letter and BOOM! It auto-completed the word. Yes, I know google does this but the fact that it was just one letter or two at the most when it was some obscure, random thing I thought about..?? It's also happened with ads and something I thought about, and then holy shit, there it is! Coincidence? Honestly I hope so because anything other than that would be terrifying. And all of a sudden I'm wondering about those 'crazy' people who are 'allergic' to wifi. Maybe they're onto something. Wifi is everywhere now too.

Someone needs to try this experiment which can easily help prove this:

Turn a web radio talk station to a language you don't know (e.g. if you are an English-speaking American, find a Spanish or French station) and leave your phone by the speaker overnight and see what kind of ads you get the next day

When our mexican house cleaners are over I get spanish ads on youtube. When I'm near my middle eastern neighbor's house the ads are in their language. The other day at work someone said they want to buy wireless xbox controllers, and the first ad in the corner of a webpage was wireless xbox controllers. I've had more coincidences than this, but these examples are all from the past 2 weeks. I believe you give up your rights to data mining somewhere in the terms and conditions of your contract.

My helper speaks only English but listened to Spanish language remixes for a month or so and started getting targeted ads in spanish. We live and work in the same complex and he also began receiving Spanish language junk mail. It could be pulled from YouTube history though as I believe that is where he listened to most of the songs from.

This has been proven many times. Of course they listen to you

Got any links?

When calling, if you use words like "bomb", "kill," "plane" or something like that a few times, you might hear some quiet crackling sounds on the line. That means you are now being recorded.

Not even conspiracy anymore, it's a "Safety precaution".

What phone? What OS? Do you have Facebook installed?

I'm wondering as well.

I just read an article stating android has significant "Spyware". Combat it with keeping it as up to date as possible. I am sure the article was posted in /r/conspiracy yesterday

Root your phone. Updating just updates the spyware.

I don't know how to do that but I will research how to. Thank you for the heads up

https://www.cyberscoop.com/android-malware-china-huawei-zte-kryptowire-blu-products/

facebook uses "targeted marketing"...get rid of the apps, use the desktop site through the browser and i just installed two android apps, one that completely disables my mic and one that disables my camera

Did this. My battery life doubled.

Android 5.0+ does that for free, stop wasting your money, people.

Do we trust it?

Do you trust a random app? You can verify Android's source code.

And in my opinion, that app can't do anything since I don't see it using root, while Google's permission system can.

I agree with this. While Android itself is open source, Google's Android is not. But, if you don't input a Google account into the phone, and uninstall all G apps, then you just need to worry about normal Cell tracking that applies to any device connected to a network

if you give a damn about privacy uninstall that god awful app immediately.

I have had this happen to me. I use an iPhone (yeah I know..) and don't have Facebook installed, I only use it through Safari. What I do have installed is Instagram and I believe it's this app that is picking up on my conversations. I know this because its one of my few apps that I allow use of the microphone and its where I see a lot of correlation between my conversations and the ads I am shown. It's very eerie and I haven't figured out how to stop it other than ditching smart phones all together.

I've considered just getting an old style flip phone, and then a Garmin gps for my car. That's all I really use anyway.

One of the top posts here was regarding this topic and facebook. Not sure where the quote came from https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/49ur7f/facebook_admits_to_continuously_eavesdropping_on/

No, we don't record your conversations. When you write a status update, we only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify.

Do you believe this? I do not. They are lying. They do record them. Do I have proof? No, but just watch it come out they do record them. I do not trust anything they say.

I honestly believe if it is running as an ad targeting mechanism (which is primarly what I believe Facebook would use it for), they would simply run the voice recognition locally and fire off text based queries to the ad server.

It would have virtually zero effect on your data and produce the same result for Facebook and their advertisers.

Wrong subreddit to downplay a conspiracy I know but I don't genuinely believe they're recording us. Could they? Probably, yes, it's definitely something of a slippery slope but I don't think we're at that point. The data transfer would easily be measurable.

Not a shill, have never worked for Facebook, just being logical.

Just yesterday I was telling my friend about the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. Literally typed the letters just pn into google and it pulled up the word pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis. They are listening in real time, and to think they do not store this data is naive. Typed pn on this computer in another room just now, and only pneumonia came up now. They listen, and record everything!

Yes if your phone already queried that word earlier of course search would prioritize suggesting it. that's still in line with my theory and doesn't suggest any form of actual recording and transmitting voice data (once again this would be sizeable on a mobile plan with limited data)

Well, I didn't look it up before. Nope. First time ever talking about it and I only looked it up to check I still knew the spelling for that word. You are starting to sound like a shill now. They are listening in dude. I do not care what you say. Lol. You gotta be the most naive person to think this. Oh well, to each his own.

Mate if you said it, and your phone already did a search as a result of hearing you say it, and you then go into Google and type it, it isn't unreasonable for Google to suggest it.

Simpler than a vast wiretapping conspiracy existing and a random redditor with legitimate post history being a shill.

Whatever helps you sleep at night. Good chattin. Gotta go to bed. Also, I did it on a computer, no cell phone involved. (edit) - I didn't call you a shill, just said you kinda sounds like one. I didn't look at your post history to be honest.

Not sure on all the exact details of how it all works but if you need any proof that google is probably always listening go to >

Myactivity.google.com

For most people this is probably enough and will make them shit their pants once they realize what they are looking at.

But if that's not enough, go ahead and search for your "Voice Searches" or whatever its labeled as. (If you have been using "Ok Google")

Play one of the recordings and you will find that it begins before you even say "Okay Google"

You also hear the vibration and the noise that always made you think THAT is when they started listening.

Like, "Okay Google" you can start listening

Little did you know, you gave them that right a long time ago.

I think not!

Yeah one friend of mine said he has documented this vocalizing keyword phrases specifically near the phone and then watching the ads roll in

They absolutley do. I'm pretty sure it's the Google Apps itself

Alexa, I'm gonna need a new pair of pants!

Bring me my brown pants!

Stopped happening to me after uninstalling Facebook and anything related.

I don't have a Facebook app installed and it still happens to me. However, based on ads I see it does seem to be listening more when Facebook is open in my browser.

Someone cut me off in traffic. In a mocking tone, I said, "I'm a big man... I drive a Mustang." Started getting ads for guess what type of car.

I went go karting a few weeks back for the first time. Over the next few days I start noticing ads for go karting on my phone. Also I've been looking into moving to Japan, and so I get ads all the time for real estate all over Japan, even though I currently live in London. It's fucked.

Happened to me just tonight.

We were talking about what's the best thing to put on dry cracked hands. Husband was saying he heard Vaseline worked well. I said no, and made him a home remedy to soak his hands. An hour later I'm online using my phone and Vaseline ads everywhere!

When I worked at JCPenney, I'd get nonstop ads for them, everywhere. No escape lol

If they did, they would find a way to monetize and exchange my time for needs. That would be a dream, thinking about blow job.

Make it happen NSA.

Just leaving this here for those that are interested in listening back to some of it.

https://myactivity.google.com/myactivity?restrict=vaa&utm_source=help

Pretty sure google inst the only one.

so i have some slightly terrifying news for you....

http://techland.time.com/2013/06/19/we-can-now-map-rooms-down-to-the-millimeter-with-a-finger-snap/

now keep in mind almost every smart phone has 2-3 microphones built in to them (for those sweet noise cancelling features)

They were bragging about that in the Dark Knight movie. When I saw that I knew they had that tech an were just showing it off to us under the guise of being fantasy. This is among other reasons why they are trying to get a cellphone into the hands of everyone on the planet. I mean there are poor African countries that don't have running water or plumbing but they are making sure they get cheap phones.

i remember the early 90's the talk of RFID chipping your kids was all over, and people said it was crazy and this would never happen...

fast forward to today and were lining up over night to buy the new $700 I-chip, we freak out if its out of sight for 5 minutes and we charge the thing for them and try to make sure it get reception everywhere imaginable.

its crazy.

I wonder what we'll get shown if we talk about this in front of our phones....

They're definitely listening and watching...all day, at all times. Doesn't even matter of your phone is off. Even if you have no phone, the tv's have cameras and microphones. And unless you live in the country you're usually surrounded by other people's phones tv's and laptops. Game set and match when it comes to privacy

I get ads like this all the time. Do you think conversations are recorded or just scanned for key words? I assume the latter, and that is why they (Facebook) can say they aren't listening to our "conversations".

http://www.aboutphone.info/lib/phreak/boxes-2.html

Oh how times have changed...

Used to happen on a friend's phone. It would feed her Facebook ads such as "friend X likes Y" where Y is something absolutely unrelated to any of her Facebook posts or interests, but something we were discussing just before she opened her phone.

If this is actually a thing and not just anecdotal then it's almost certainly a locally run word recognition service that just returns ads based on phrases that it identified and queried to the ad server.

I say this because it wouldn't be feasible to run it as a constant data channel for listening in on somebody, and it almost certainly won't be transmitting audio data back to the server because it would have a noticeable impact on your mobile data.

Creepy nonetheless.

Eh nothing new.

Even FB policy says they listen when you post a status update.

Pretty sure they listen all the time anyway. Not to mention even if you turn your phone off, the microphone can still be activated.

I don't doubt phone mics are being used in ways people may not be aware of. But a lot of the things posted in this thread could also be from the cookie trail people have left browsing the web coupled with the fact many of these companies share your data with a ton of other companies for targeted marketing. You should also ask yourself if its just a bit of synchronicity which is really an interesting phenomena in itself.

Has anyone run a wireshark on their phone to see what data is being sent?

Fakebook is one of the worst. The mobile apps TOS is disgusting. It reads like a page out of 1984. Seriously get rid of Facebook.

Not saying Google is any better I would recommend using alternatives to that too.

We are allowing our grandkids to be born into a world of constant surveillance. Privacy will be a thing of the past to them. Like a horse and carriage is to us.

I think it'll be fun to teach them how tech works and how to be anonymous

Recording with the mic is nothing special coding wise as it's one of the most common things apps do, so this is all basically set up for developers with code examples in the sdks for devices. The recording part isn't a conspiracy really. What is a conspiracy of sorts is the other frameworks available to developers that let you record a sample and then analyze certain ranges of frequencies for codes. The conspiracy part is TV ads have these codes embedded in them. Also youtube and other online videos. Ever heard of shazam? The app that you can record music and it identifies it? That algo and similar ones are used to parse recordings and identify these signatures. So of course speech is pretty common and it can pick up key words and forward the information to the company that then sells that info. Pretty sneaky, but to me the embedded signatures in tv ads that these tools can identify is the collusion part. I think one toolkit was called silverfox or something and there was a list of apps that had it so people could uninstall them. Of course these days they all have something.

When I'm not on mobile I will present you some good info/articles. It works like this.

Human hearing range is from 20hz to 20khz roughly. It varies and gets worse with age. High frequencies are very distant sounding and mostly just sound like a high pitch whine.

1) A TV ad is made and in post production a high frequency sound out of human hearing range is added to the audio with a unique signature. This plays over the TV, but you don't realize it's there, because you can't hear it.

2) A software company is approached to add some functionality to their software to gather marketing information. In exchange, they get paid based on the info they gather. It becomes part of their business model to make money on their free app, just like regular ads.

3) A developer making an app at this company is provided a software development kit for implementing this market information gathering. They implement it as per the instructions provided and it's pretty straight forward. They don't need to know the internals of how it actually works. They test to make sure it works, and then they deploy their app as usual.

4) You install this game. On iOS you just install and don't care. On android you give it permission to use your mic because you don't care to read the prompts. So you're playing this game, Candy Crush or whatever, and you're sitting in front of your TV watching a show. Candy crush is listening. An ad comes on and candy crush hears the signal. It records that you've watched that ad and it sends a message to say you've watched that ad.

So what's the point? Well on top of the fact that they record and listen for key words of your actual voice, they now know everything you watch everywhere you are. These codes are in movies, tv shows, ads, the whole shebang.

There are lots of articles on it. Search "high frequency tv apps listening". It's not even a "conspiracy theory" it's fact.

cellphones have a camera facing both directions, they have microphone, they have gps tracking, they are in the hand or on the ear or in the pocket of probably a majority of people on the planet. all seeing eye? why would we need to implant microchips in people when we could just sell them one and make them want to carry it around everywhere.

No. It happens to me sometimes. Talking about pizza or somwthing, next add I see is pizzahut. Shits fucked brother. Toke on!

Although, I 100% agree with the fact that a cellphone listens to you I personally think this is nothing more than targeted advertising. This happens to everyone and is based upon what ever your search history is

Was sitting discussing Halloween decorations for our Halloween party. Mentioned dry ice several times and then went to type into google search engine and it filled in "dry ice" after "D". Never searched it up before. Not the only instance.

Coincidence? In your case, I would say probably yes. If you said "I was talking about obscure product X and then got an unusual ad for obscure product X!" then it might have been from listening in. I can't imagine anyone would bother listening in to tell someone who MIGHT be coughing that lung cancer treatment is available. I don't know if a computer could even accurately tell when someone is coughing versus when someone is clearing their throat or merely rubbing fabric up against the microphone.

Do you believe this? I do not. They are lying. They do record them. Do I have proof? No, but just watch it come out they do record them. I do not trust anything they say.

Did this. My battery life doubled.

Android 5.0+ does that for free, stop wasting your money, people.

I think it'll be fun to teach them how tech works and how to be anonymous

When I'm not on mobile I will present you some good info/articles. It works like this.

Human hearing range is from 20hz to 20khz roughly. It varies and gets worse with age. High frequencies are very distant sounding and mostly just sound like a high pitch whine.

1) A TV ad is made and in post production a high frequency sound out of human hearing range is added to the audio with a unique signature. This plays over the TV, but you don't realize it's there, because you can't hear it.

2) A software company is approached to add some functionality to their software to gather marketing information. In exchange, they get paid based on the info they gather. It becomes part of their business model to make money on their free app, just like regular ads.

3) A developer making an app at this company is provided a software development kit for implementing this market information gathering. They implement it as per the instructions provided and it's pretty straight forward. They don't need to know the internals of how it actually works. They test to make sure it works, and then they deploy their app as usual.

4) You install this game. On iOS you just install and don't care. On android you give it permission to use your mic because you don't care to read the prompts. So you're playing this game, Candy Crush or whatever, and you're sitting in front of your TV watching a show. Candy crush is listening. An ad comes on and candy crush hears the signal. It records that you've watched that ad and it sends a message to say you've watched that ad.

So what's the point? Well on top of the fact that they record and listen for key words of your actual voice, they now know everything you watch everywhere you are. These codes are in movies, tv shows, ads, the whole shebang.

There are lots of articles on it. Search "high frequency tv apps listening". It's not even a "conspiracy theory" it's fact.