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

What rot.

Here’s a simple experiment I ran and still works.

Back in the day there was a truly ghastly add for ear wax removal that showed up on YouTube in the UK.

In an experiment, and prank, I told two of my close friends about this, and how this horrid advert would kill my appetite when it came up.

And then I made it a point to repeat “ear wax removal” loudly several times.

Sure enough. A day later my dear friend messaged me with something on the lines of “I hate you”

Their phones were Android and iOS. I believe it was the Android user suffered.

If what you're talking about is the source of the ad, why did you see the ad yourself? Were you shouting about ear wax removal at your phone?

There are millions of ways the adware running on your phones could've correlated your profile and spread the "infection" to your friend. Basic location access being the most important one, but sharing an IP address (your friends' WiFi?), being near the same Bluetooth beacons, having the same stored SSIDs, or mere coincidence that your friend saw the same ad targeting a wide demographic are much more probable than "my phone is listening 24/7".

Sure. But its fun, and we can always replicate, just need a terrible ad.

Do note, this was tested in a park, so no shared WiFi, no Bluetooth beacons/devices. Also, this ad doesn’t/didn’t show up for others, ever.

I’m assuming like most friends you and your friends have nothing in common like interests, demographics, etc.?

And I’m assuming you also made them aware of other ads you’d seen recently so they could see if those showed up as well?

Yep. They 100% do not share an interest in ear wax removal, or had a medical need of that nature.

Why do you think I would put up a comment on HN of all places, with this degree of confidence.

> tested with other ads… If I knew that this, was going to be needed to study, 5 years into the future, I would have conducted a double blind study. Sadly I could not, however, it’s still fun, so we can always replicate.

The question is, have you found a horrid ad yet? Side note, this was in the UK

I was kidding… Of course you and your friends share some demographics and interests—- making it unsurprising that you’d get similar ads.

> The question is, have you found a horrid ad yet? Side note, this was in the UK

The question is, why does it have to be a horrid ad? Does the phone only listen for things about horrid ads to show you?

You have to know that your phone isn’t listening to you right? That it’s just a coincidence and that when you’re told to be on the lookout for an earwax ad that you’re more likely to see one, right?

You can’t be 100% confident about what you’re saying and it horrifies me that people go through such lengths to protect these… ad companies? Oh you’re just bringing some sense to the situation, right? Ad companies are the sleaziest of them all and I would not be surprised if they did stuff like this. Smart tvs, dishwashers that NEED wifi to get full functionality, phones always with me and (especially android) users accepting everything willy nilly…

Your phone might not be listening to you straight out of the box. Might. You don’t know for sure, nobody here does. Why err on the side of blissful ignorance? And then you accept 10 end-user-agreements you don’t read, install dozens of apps you don’t read the small letters of… and you think nobody had been listened to?

It’s a bigger chance it happens than that it doesn’t, in my mind. I haven’t been able to catch it using mitm proxies, but I’m not the best at that, and I haven’t a pretty virgin iphone on purpose.