On Sunday, I went to a sporting goods store to buy a pair of shoes. They did not have my size so all I ended up buying was a water bottle. I paid cash and did not give them my name or phone number.

Today my FB feed has ads for water bottles and bicycle accessories; notable because the last thing I bought in that store was a bicycle. That was 3 years ago. Impressive!

I've figured out that the way they do this is track your location on the phone. What I am not sure of is how they know what I bought or have bought in the past. I suppose it could be a coincidence.

OTOH, if they showed me an ad for the shoes I wanted in my size (they were out of them) I would buy a pair right now.

Saw an article recently about a couple who were testing the Big Brotherness. They don't have a dog. They both set their iPhones on the dining room table and proceeded to have a conversation in which they mentioned "dog food" several times. Within a couple hours they were both served dozens of ads for dog food.

There was no conclusion as to exactly what app was eavesdropping.

I have turned off the microphone to all my apps, I just turn on the facebook one when I need it to talk to junior.

quote:

Originally posted by pianojuggler:
Saw an article recently about a couple who were testing the Big Brotherness. They don't have a dog. They both set their iPhones on the dining room table and proceeded to have a conversation in which they mentioned "dog food" several times. Within a couple hours they were both served dozens of ads for dog food.

Turn off your phone!

It is tracking you.

so creepy

i don't have a smart speaker but are you saying our phones are listening?

jf

Will try to be more entertaining.

So, I typically drop my two phones -- my personal iPhone and my company iPhone -- on the dining room table when I get home.

Yesterday, Mrs. pj was going through the junk mail and announced she was discarding the ad for Sleep Number Beds. (The firmness of our mattress has been a topic of discussion recently.)

I spent some time last evening moving some boxes around the basement. I discovered a couple boxes that were sitting on the floor in one corner had gotten damaged when we had a small foundation leak years ago. I brought some of the relics from one box upstairs -- ephemera from trips to England, Scotland, Kuwait, and Australia. As I was going through them I noted that a few items were musty and told Mrs. pj about the water damage.

Later that evening, I was reading HuffPo on my personal iPhone. What do I get in the ad stack? Top of the stack... an ad for household mold remediation. A few ads down, Sleep Number Beds. I have never gotten ads for either of those things in the past.

And for a couple months I have gotten ads for treatments for medical conditions that have been discussed at home.


I looked at the privacy settings on my iPhone. I have not granted access to the microphone or speech recognition to any app. Of course, the standard Apple apps are not included in the list, so I assume you can't turn off access to the camera, microphone, location, etc. to those.

There appears to be no way to completely disable Siri. I am going through and turning off Siri for every application.


For a couple of years, my work phone was a Samsung Galaxy S7 with Android. I hated it -- mostly the phone itself. I am thinking about going back to a phone that's just a phone.

This is pretty creepy.

The sad bit is that it seems anyone under, oh... 30 or so... now thinks this total lack of privacy is perfectly normal, and it's just fine for megacorporations to know your every move and thought and use that data to sell you carp. And goddess knows what else. Your telescreen is in your pocket.

I ran into old friends at the big orange home diy store...We caught up on my kids and I mentioned that Oldest was just married.

They said.."OOO Show me a picture!"

I proudly mentioned that ..nope...I didn't have my phone on me.

I am old enough to remember a whole day out without connection, just to come home to see if there were messages on my answering machine.

That and I like to freak out the GPS tracking a bit.

I think this weekend I’ll pop in to a couple of luxury car dealerships and talk a lot about Lamborghinis.

Should dress up my Facebook feed considerably.

No "smart" phones here. I am on the internet a lot but have set pretty strict controls on what's tracked.

quote:

Originally posted by BeeLady:
I ran into old friends at the big orange home diy store...We caught up on my kids and I mentioned that Oldest was just married.

They said.."OOO Show me a picture!"

I proudly mentioned that ..nope...I didn't have my phone on me.

I am old enough to remember a whole day out without connection, just to come home to see if there were messages on my answering machine.

That and I like to freak out the GPS tracking a bit.

Funny coincidence. I was at one of those orange places today as well. Brought home 80 bricks for the new beds I'm building for my dye plants.

It amazes me that the big box stores carry a lot of fruit trees and ornamentals that are out of zone for this area. The orange place wasn't too bad but all the peach trees were zone 5 plants. Now, as far as I know, we're pretty much zone 4 here--unless global warming has changed that. I was at Tractor Supply earlier in the week, almost nothing was offered for zone 4, it was all zone 5. Nope. Sounds risky to me.

quote:

Originally posted by CHAS:
Will try to be more entertaining.

This might help:

https://smartphones.gadgethack...llected-you-0184527/