So I had a verbal conversation with a coworker yesterday and now I’m getting fed very specific ads. No possible way it’s accidental. I have most of the microphone access to apps limited, I have Google assistant turned off and no VPA setup in my home. I use a Oneplus 9 pro, does anyone have recommendations on how to further root cause this or just par for the course for using any standard android OS? Have other folks had similar experience after locking down their stock phones?
Before caller ID people were SURE they were psychic because ‘I was just thinking about them and they phoned’
The reality is the odds of things like that never happening are far more unlikely than it happening occasionally
I’ve never had this happen to me but I am always on a a Degoogled version of Android such as GrapheneOS, DivestOS or /e/ OS.
I bet using an adblock would make it much more difficult for your phone to call home. Try adaway
Why would you use that software in the first place
I have whole house ad blocking with a pihole and its enforced with pfsense. All DNS traffic gets NATed to pihole.
How are you seeing ads at all, then?
It was a suggested article not an ad
The inky way you’ll ever remove ads 100% is by moving to a cave with no electricity. We can bring it down to a minimum, but these technics change daily, its impossible to keep up with all of them.
DNS filtering only gets you so far. Its far, but certainly not at the end of the road. More complex and differently designed systems wont be bothered much.
Encrypted DNS or simply hosting legitimate stuff on the same domain cannot really be fully blocked entirely or make your life difficult.Excellent choice. Check the logs, there’s more than enough evidence in there to shut up some of the creepy big tech defenders in here. I see over 70,000 attempts from my wife’s phone alone trying to hit Samsung, Google or Meta. She doesn’t even have any Meta accounts, but has a Samsung phone, take a hint.
Apps only use things like microphone, GPS and camera when the apps are active. Those are the permissions most lenient settings.
pinephone has hardware killswitch. but that cant protect you from other devices like other ppl phones.
your coworker might’ve looked up things related to the conversation, and the ad provider figured out that you two are in the same social circle. so far I haven’t seen any actual research that would prove that ads are tailored based on microphone recordings, just a bunch of anecdotal stories.
There are people who google stuff while being logged into google?
That’s actually a great point. He is older and uses a dumb phone but we have been working with each other over 5 years so there are going to be lots of connections to each other. Furthermore this coincidental ad is rare, I haven’t gotten one like this in awhile.
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Exactly, This is just how our brains work. It is surprisingly how much stuff we miss because it isn’t relivent to our lives. It is like those videos of the man in the gorilla suit in the background. You’re so focused on the subject of the video your missing a gorilla walking past in the background.
I notice this about words or phrases as well. If I pay attention to what I think is an uncommon word or phrase. Suddenly everyone I know friends, family and coworkers all “start” using that word or phrase. Now maybe they have started using it but I think it is more likely they have always been using that word/phrase but I have just not given it much thought.
When my sister lived with me, my YouTube algorithm served me up videos on her hobby which I had no interest in. But I assume because Google can tell we’re living in the same place, on the same internet, with similar demographics, it would target me with what interested her.
It would be a lot easier for them to just make connections between people using data they already have compared to recording everyone’s audio and processing it.
It makes me chuckle (in a nihilistic way) to think of a hypothetical future google-owned porn viewer that would serve up suggestions based on what others in your house are into. Was this video recommendation random or did I just learn unnecessary information about my parent?
I am using a deGoogled phone and also doing browser separation, I only use google in chromium, never for searching stuff. I was talking about getting an electric toothbrush and my wife googled a big brand to check the price (she does not care about privacy). About 10 minutes later ad blocking was not working for some reason and I starter getting toothbrush ads. I would say it knew somehow that we were in the same household and targeted us both.
well you have the exact same public ipv4 address or ipv6 prefix
It’s a very interesting coincidence. And say your co-worker was looking up stuff related to this subject why would it be you who gets served the ad? That doesn’t really make sense. If mics were listening into conversations we’d be hearing a lot more of these “coincidence” stories and it’s pretty rare to come across them. I am not saying it doesn’t happen, I don’t trust these fuckers with anything. I use Linux with NextDNS filters up the ass, and have a rooted, degoogled phone with Adaway on it because my trust is so low and I cannot stand ads - if one ever does get past my setup I immediately am searching for a way to find out how it got through, which is rare.
I love what you are doing with your house set-up. How did an ad get to you, I guess it was is on your phone.
Friend googles topic from his home wifi. You visit friend’s home for a couple of hours with your phone’s wifi enabled. Even without signing in to his wifi your phone still logs that you were in range of his wifi for 2 hours. Now you’ll get served ads for the topic that he googled about, because people who spend time together often have similar interests, or you may mention the advertised product to him if he ever talks to you about the topic.
Androids statistically are higher in exploits, if you’re worried about privacy like I was, moving away from google entirely and all their code is probably best
I’ve noticed that too. Intentionally veered a conversation into a different topic and, lo and behold, I get “relevant recommendation” short time later. That was, not entirely coincidentally, the same day I unlocked the bootloader and flashed a de-googled ROM.
The thing with tailored ads is, you’re more predictable than you think you are. Source: am a data scientist (not in advertisement).
I have 0 apps allowed microphone access all the time.
There is no evidence that phones are snooping on people, but I would say even if unlikely it’s a reasonable concern given what companies do get up to.
However it is more likely the ads were being served because of all the other data you’re allowing Google to scrape from you all the time rather than the phone mic.
Rather than focusing on the microphone, look at the bigger picture of how your data is being pillaged by Google all the time.
For me, I switched away from Gmail, stopped using their search engine, use Firefox and not Chrome, and don’t use their other services where possible. I have android on my phone and use Google maps and Google home. It’s still a huge problem but I use that part of the ecosystem for convenience and no other. Similarly on PC I don’t use Google for anything where I can avoid it, use Firefox containers to keep Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta data as separate as possible, plus I use Linux and VPN as needed, and lots of privacy extensions in Firefox.
It’s possible to minimise your data exposure to the big tech companies, but difficult to severe completely. You could go even further and switch from android to Graphene OS (I have seriously considered this).
I would go by the principle of compartmentalising your data as much as possible and limiting access to snooping eyes. The transition can be hard but once you’ve done it you get used to using disparate unnonnected services. Like I really don’t need or benefit from my email data being connected to my data storage or my search engine; it’s a false convenience that benefitted Google only.
I didn’t know there was a such thing as FUTO Voice Input. It’s really good. Shame the “Open” nature of Google Android was rejected by Google Keyboard and other Google things…
I don’t see on the provided screenshot any apps that shouldn’t have the mic access. You can certainly deny it and break some apps functionality but you’ll be “safe from ads”
me and a coworker tried an experiment almost ten years ago where we would whisper “breast milk pump” into a phone that had it’s screen locked and everything. About two weeks later started seeing ads for expecting mothers, we are both dudes…
