On top of this, there’s lots of ways that they would get the data without secretly listening to microphones, which people may not be aware of in all these anecdotes. In the one above, maybe just one party member googled lab grown diamonds, or perhaps messaged a friend on Facebook messenger about their trick. Not sure if that gets analysed for ads but it’s more plausible than mics. Anyway if they’re all on the same WiFi then they’ll probably be on the same IP and could easily be shown the same ads, making all party members now ripe for a diamond ad.
There’s a well known video of a guy saying “cat food” around his phone, and then his phone shows Google ads for cat food. He concluded that it was secretly listening to him, because there was no other way for Google to get that info other than to shadily tap into his mic. He performs this experiment on a live streamed YouTube video
On top of this, there’s lots of ways that they would get the data without secretly listening to microphones, which people may not be aware of in all these anecdotes. In the one above, maybe just one party member googled lab grown diamonds, or perhaps messaged a friend on Facebook messenger about their trick. Not sure if that gets analysed for ads but it’s more plausible than mics. Anyway if they’re all on the same WiFi then they’ll probably be on the same IP and could easily be shown the same ads, making all party members now ripe for a diamond ad.
There’s a well known video of a guy saying “cat food” around his phone, and then his phone shows Google ads for cat food. He concluded that it was secretly listening to him, because there was no other way for Google to get that info other than to shadily tap into his mic. He performs this experiment on a live streamed YouTube video