Do social media listen in on our conversations in order to target us with ads? Or are we just a bit paranoid? A little test might speak a thousand words.
We have all heard that our phones could be listening to our everyday conversations in order to then bombard us with targeted adverts. Is there any truth to the matter, though? Have you ever tested this theory and talked about an obscure product with friends and then waited patiently to see whether an advert for that vacuum sealer or scented colander you mentioned appeared in your social media feeds? If it never came up, you may simply have forgotten about your test. If it did appear, however, then you’d probably have thought that your phone must have been listening to every word and was now invading your privacy.
There has been plenty of discussion about whether social media apps are able to listen in and many people have even noted seeing obscure targeted adverts appear in their feeds after speaking about them in daily conversation. However, this would be illegal in most countries without the user being completely aware of this, let alone difficult for the companies to perform.
So, I decided to find out what Twitter users think about the subject and created a poll asking if people think their phone or apps are listening to them. I received 234 votes, with 80% of people claiming that their phones are listening to them. This is a very interesting outcome, especially when most of my followers and retweets came from the InfoSec community.
Let’s just take a mo ..
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