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Your phone isn't secretly listening to you, but the truth is more disturbing

(newatlas.com)
369 points zeech | 3 comments | 26 Apr 25 00:26 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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Ichthypresbyter ◴[26 Apr 25 13:47 UTC] No.43803589[source]▶
>Not only does the system know exactly where you are at every moment, it knows who your friends are, what they are interested in, and who you are spending time with

This actually makes sense of an anecdote a colleague uses to say that he thinks his phone is listening to him.

I am a keen skier. He used to ski a lot, but hasn't been for several years. Around the start of ski season this year, we talked about my plans to go skiing that weekend, and later that day he started seeing skiing-related ads.

He thinks it's because his phone listened into the conversation, but it could just as easily have been that it was spending more time near my phone (I had only recently started at that job) on which I regularly search for skiing-related things like conditions reports and directions to ski areas.

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1. trollied ◴[26 Apr 25 14:30 UTC] No.43803958[source]▶
You were probably in the same place using the same IP address, and both browsed - doesn’t matter which sites you both visited, the trackers have you. You might have shown him where you were going. Ad trackers thought “I’ll serve ski ads to people that were on that IP address because somebody else looked at xyz”.
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2. Ichthypresbyter ◴[26 Apr 25 22:03 UTC] No.43807612[source]▶
How do IP addresses work with cell towers? The WiFi where I work doesn't allow personal devices to connect, but there's reasonable 5G.
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3. rr808 ◴[27 Apr 25 00:56 UTC] No.43808555[source]▶
At my last 3 jobs they've had a public wifi network for staff to use for personal use.