Does facebook listen to conversations??

[wiggy001]

s1962a said:

I was ultra sceptical as well till it happened to me (the listening in on convos) when I started this post. How random is it to send you an Ad for a local aircon servicing place, when you were just talking about your car being serviced and them not checking the aircon a few hours earlier? There was no googling or any electrical record of that search as my mrs leaves it all up to me and I sure didn't search for anything to do with servicing aircon!

I had another thought - as it's hot you'd expect some aircon related ads anyway, but how come I didn't get any ads for fans or house aircon?

They're out to get us, I tell ya

Now tell us about all the ads you've seen that weren't related to anything you were talking about recently. It's coincidence, maybe related to other searches you have made in the past combined with it being summer. The infrastructure required to listen to your conversations and target ads at you would be immense, not to mention illegal.

[Zato]

130R said:

Zato said:

Facebook if not logged out can read the metatags of all emails you send and receive and will recommend friends based on your send/receive addresses. Linkdin does exactly the same.

Then I would say your email provider has a serious security vulnerability ..

Some of the theories here are hilarious.

Has nothing to do with email provider. And sorry its not metatags. More info here

http://www.zdnet.com/article/how-linkedins-people-...

Edited by Zato on Saturday 23 July 00:04

[Conor D]

tenfour said:

ZesPak said:

Newc said:

Whilst that might be comical, don't forget that he would be a prime candidate for hackers, so I can understand the reasoning.

Is that the camera and phono jack he's taped up?

That's where the microphone is located on many MacBook models

Edited by Conor D on Saturday 23 July 22:59

[Conor D]

I'm genuinely surprised people don't know that this goes on... You should take a look at some of the permissions you give to an app when you download it to your phone.

Siri, Google Cortana, Text Dictation, Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp etc all have permission to use your microphone and camera pretty much when they please. Features like 'Hi Siri' will require the microphone on at all times for it to function.

Which means your mic is always active and is analysing what is being said until it hears "Hey Siri"... What do you think is happening to all that data? Same goes for Smart TVs and the Xbox One with the Kinect Sensor. The Xbox One has a feature where you can turn it on using voice commands when it's powered off.. i.e. the microphone is always active.

Facebook and Google are in the data business. Better targeted advertisements equates to more money.

[s1962a]

Conor D said:

I'm genuinely surprised people don't know that this goes on... You should take a look at some of the permissions you give to an app when you download it to your phone.

Siri, Google Cortana, Text Dictation, Facebook, Snapchat, Whatsapp etc all have permission to use your microphone and camera pretty much when they please. Features like 'Hi Siri' will require the microphone on at all times for it to function.

Which means your mic is always active and is analysing what is being said until it hears "Hey Siri"... What do you think is happening to all that data? Same goes for Smart TVs and the Xbox One with the Kinect Sensor. The Xbox One has a feature where you can turn it on using voice commands when it's powered off.. i.e. the microphone is always active.

Facebook and Google are in the data business. Better targeted advertisements equates to more money.

Good points.. I wonder if the naysayers still deny it happens?

[S10GTA]

Having very much been in the "don't be so daft" camp I'm actually inclined to believe it is listening. I've had a large number of adverts show recently which have been stuff I've been talking about. Octavia vrs for example, I was talking to someone at work about them as he wanted a new car, then I had an advert pop up shortly afterwards.

I've removed the microphone permission now.

Apologies to those I said were talking rubbish.

Edit. It's done it again, said to the Mrs I need to get some coffee from the shop and I now have a nescafe advert. Ffs.

Edited by S10GTA on Monday 19th September 18:46

[Terminator X]

This sounds great, always listening apparently:

Amazon Echo

TX.

[audi321]

Thicko alert......and I might be showing my ignorance here, but how do you have a conversation in FB? Do you mean messages? It's just your post reads to be a physical conversation?

I don't use FB at all hence my lack of knowledge. But if so, I don't understand why you would have a conversation via FB as opposed to calling each other?

[Hugo a Gogo]

we're talking about actual face-to-face conversations

whether facebook is actually listening in via the microphone on your phone and picking up keywords

[Ari]

S10GTA said:

Having very much been in the "don't be so daft" camp I'm actually inclined to believe it is listening. I've had a large number of adverts show recently which have been stuff I've been talking about. Octavia vrs for example, I was talking to someone at work about them as he wanted a new car, then I had an advert pop up shortly afterwards.

And if the advert had been for a BMW? You'd have thought nothing of it.

Ah, but what if your mate at work and you had been talking about BMWs? Then the BMW ad would have had you believing you'd been bugged.

But of course if you had been talking about BMWs and the Octavia advert appeared, you'd have thought nothing of it...

It's like when you buy a new car and suddenly you see other ones everywhere. They were there before, you just weren't 'tuned in' to them.

[wiggy001]

S10GTA said:

Having very much been in the "don't be so daft" camp I'm actually inclined to believe it is listening. I've had a large number of adverts show recently which have been stuff I've been talking about. Octavia vrs for example, I was talking to someone at work about them as he wanted a new car, then I had an advert pop up shortly afterwards.

I've removed the microphone permission now.

Apologies to those I said were talking rubbish.

Edit. It's done it again, said to the Mrs I need to get some coffee from the shop and I now have a nescafe advert. Ffs.

Edited by S10GTA on Monday 19th September 18:46

You're posting this on a motoring website. So there's a fair chance you'll get motoring related adverts.

I keep seeing adverts for solid wood furniture on Facebook. Is it because I was talking to the missus about furniture recently and my phone is spying on me, or that I googled "solid wood furniture" a while back?

[Johnnytheboy]

The only way to test this is to - as a group - talk about something quite obscure in the presence of our devices, and see if we can induce a mass advertising campaign.

I suggest cowbells, in honour of something that happened* on another forum many years ago, when targetted ads first appeared.

So if everyone on this thread says 'cowbell' once a day to their phone, let's see if FB starts trying to sell us cowbells.

* A certain poster had the word "cowbell" in their sig, and as a result the board was bombarded with ads for unusual musical instruments

[All that jazz]

Johnnytheboy said:

The only way to test this is to - as a group - talk about something quite obscure in the presence of our devices, and see if we can induce a mass advertising campaign.

I suggest cowbells, in honour of something that happened* on another forum many years ago, when targetted ads first appeared.

So if everyone on this thread says 'cowbell' once a day to their phone, let's see if FB starts trying to sell us cowbells.

* A certain poster had the word "cowbell" in their sig, and as a result the board was bombarded with ads for unusual musical instruments

Not that simple. Only likely to work for products or services that are monetised through advertising and I doubt cowbells are.

[Johnnytheboy]

All that jazz said:

Not that simple. Only likely to work for products or services that are monetised through advertising and I doubt cowbells are.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cowbell&oq=cowbell&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3640j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=cowbell&tbm=shop

[All that jazz]

Johnnytheboy said:

All that jazz said:

Not that simple. Only likely to work for products or services that are monetised through advertising and I doubt cowbells are.

https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cowbell&oq=cowbell&aqs=chrome..69i57j0l5.3640j0j8&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#q=cowbell&tbm=shop

In my defence I didn't know cowbells were actually a "thing" in addition to their historical use.

[Ari]

Johnnytheboy said:

The only way to test this is to - as a group - talk about something quite obscure in the presence of our devices, and see if we can induce a mass advertising campaign.

I suggest cowbells, in honour of something that happened* on another forum many years ago, when targetted ads first appeared.

So if everyone on this thread says 'cowbell' once a day to their phone, let's see if FB starts trying to sell us cowbells.

* A certain poster had the word "cowbell" in their sig, and as a result the board was bombarded with ads for unusual musical instruments

Except everyone who's read your post will have had 'cowbell' on their screen now, so maybe it's that. Or am I missing a whoosh?

[Johnnytheboy]

Ari said:

Johnnytheboy said:

The only way to test this is to - as a group - talk about something quite obscure in the presence of our devices, and see if we can induce a mass advertising campaign.

I suggest cowbells, in honour of something that happened* on another forum many years ago, when targetted ads first appeared.

So if everyone on this thread says 'cowbell' once a day to their phone, let's see if FB starts trying to sell us cowbells.

* A certain poster had the word "cowbell" in their sig, and as a result the board was bombarded with ads for unusual musical instruments

Except everyone who's read your post will have had 'cowbell' on their screen now, so maybe it's that. Or am I missing a whoosh?

Aah, ok so (no whoosh, I'm thick), we need to come up with a phrase that we can identify, without actually writing it in this thread.

[Hugo a Gogo]

such as the thick yellow liquid dessert product known as 'English Sauce' in France

[Johnnytheboy]

That rhymes with a condiment you might smear on a hot dog?

[Hugo a Gogo]

zackly