Easy. Your phone is using what you do online, your camera and your mic to make the most detailed advertising file on you possible. Then they use this file to serve you personal ads.

Your microphone is always listening to everything you do. I know it sounds like a conspiracy theory, but it’s not. Think of Alexa, it’s always listening too...

And you’ve allowed it to happen, by signing the Terms and Conditions. Did you not read the entire thing?

I get those too every time im browsing online or if I put stuff on my wish list on Amazon.

That's different. That's Google analytics, and you are providing the information by searching those key words. OP is talking about non-consentual voice and picture data mining.

Ah okay yeah true.

Happens to me all the time. I was watching a movie called Chopping Mall the other night and on google I typed in CH and it auto filled to Chopping Mal

What do you make of this?

They are using photos, microphone, and collecting data to read your mind.

Pretty sure this is a well known thing. Def creepy tho.

Google listens in to everything you say, a does Alexa and every tech like that. Same thing happens to me all the time. I've even said redicilously specific things just to demonstrate this when people hasn't beloved it's happening.

iPhone also has a hot mic for siri

Lol why would that be different the first iPhone was developed with the US military. These phones aren't for the consumer.

Instagram and WhatsApp are Facebook owned apps that require microphone access. Try uninstalling those apps and you will see a lot less targeted apps.

Doesn't help to uninstall, those things are built into the operating system. Physically removing the mic will help, but renders your phone not really a phone anymore. Go buy an old phone.

Apple by default, does not give hardware access to apps. The same cannot be same about all Android phones though. Some Android phones are built and shipped to hand over hardware access to 3rd party apps like Facebook or Instagram. Some Android phones are a bit more restricted in that regard.

Are you willing to do an experiment? Think of a product that you've never used, den an ad for, searched for or own. Maybe ask a college about their lady purchase or something. Say that products name a couple of times in the presence of your phone. See if you get ads for that very thing. If you do get ads, I'm right. If you don't, you're right. Deal?

I have done this recently before and I have not received any ads for things that I casually say. But then again I don't use any Facebook services and I'm careful about what permissions the apps installed on my phone use.

An unfortunate truth is that your cellphone may know you better than most people in your network.

Everything a cellphone takes in, whether its by typing into it, speaking near it or having the camera exposed is being collected and stored away. All that data gets horded somewhere. Big companies pay for that data to be able to push targeted marketing to you, this is the most benign way your personal data can get used. The more intrusive and alarming reason your data can get used is to target and harass you, for a multitude of reasons.

A comment made previously is that they're trying to read your mind, not only are they trying to do that, but also trying to make predictions based of your behavior that's collected by your phone.

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Imagine the profile somebody could draw up on an individual by merely analyzing their; text messages, frequented locations, bio metrics, speech recognition pattern, etc.
A phone can literally know you and is an extension of your consciousness by proxy of usage.

This is why privacy is important.

Phone chips are powerful enough nowadays to do image recognition onboard. What was once heavy AI and server side only is light work for the latest phone chips. Not only do those apps have access to your photos but they know already what’s in them.

On top of that I am sure that whenever you use Instagram, whatsapp, any of the Facebook apps it’s sending camera and microphone data back to Facebook. Even when you’re not using the camera in the app. It’s not sending images or a video stream, but keywords of things that are recognised by the AI chip in your phone.

For a bonus. I have a theory that when you’re browsing Instagram it’s tracking your pupils to see what part of the image you’re looking at as to identify without “likes” what’s is interesting to you.

this isn't new. they have been doing this for 10-15 years. It's only now with the more powerful cellphones that they can now record your voice, listen for trigger words (columbia, ben and jerrys, etc.) and key off of them. Also on all pictures it will run them against known items to see if they can find one on there. Also, with geo fencing on the newer cell phones they can detect what isle you are in at Walmart and see how long it takes you to travel down that isle. They can tell where you stop and for how long. Also if you stop for more than a few seconds they figure you're looking at an item. They just shoot a picture and see which one. It gets far far creepier the more you go down the rabbit hole. I used to work for Walmart and it's a horror what they can tell from you just entering. Also, paying with cash doesn't do anything anymore because your cell phone tells the cops that you were there. Sorry, TV shows.

Would it be considered stalking if you were to deliberately choose to bring your "stalker" everywhere to do everything you do?

I know this may sound a bit flippant but that's the reality of the situation. Not directed at you but at the hopelessness of the overall situation.

It could be that you never payed attention to those adverts before, so you have seen them but just don't remember. The only reason they sunk in this time is because you recently ate your first BnJ, etc

Good thing to remember is that you don't notice the hundreds of times this doesn't happen to you every week or month. We like patterns and recognizing coincidences.

Many people on here are aware of how much your data/information is collected and used, but for those not well versed let me share an example with you: A sex toy was on the market that could be controlled with an app. That sex toy company then used the phone mics to record audio data of the sexual experiences, for whatever reason (selling data, analyzing data for R&D).

If something you use connects to the internet, just assume it's being used for data collection.

I'm not here to say data and data analytics is inherently bad, as it can be a powerful tool used when used ethically, just that people need to be aware of how data is used in the modern world.

Lol yeah, your phone tracks your search history games and location and uses it to select advertisements.

I just had the dumbest ah ha moment of my life.

Tonight I was idly wondering why ESPN (and many other apps)need access to my calls, texts, camera, etc.

Ahhh.

Wow.

I was a skeptic too about this...until it started happening all the time. I'm going legit crazy.

Yes this is well known, particularly if you leave Siri, OK Google, Cortana, or Alexa on. They listen to you all the time and send your recording back to their servers for parsing. That's what allows them to respond when needed, but it also means they have a lot of other unrelated text parsed from your conversations which they can then sell to marking firms for money.

Yo question do you have a facebook and the facebook messenger app installed on your phone?

Do you have twitter and instagram?

Apple by default, does not give hardware access to apps. The same cannot be same about all Android phones though. Some Android phones are built and shipped to hand over hardware access to 3rd party apps like Facebook or Instagram. Some Android phones are a bit more restricted in that regard.

Do you have twitter and instagram?