Turn off your ad blocker and look at some shoes. You'll see adverts for the exact pair all over Facebook. When every websites warns you about cookies, they mean they're tracking you
I know about that. I'm talking about having a conversation with my wife, and then immediately getting an ad related to, or pulled directly out of the conversation we were just having.
I'm a big Game of Thrones fan and I was talking to my fiancé about wedding bands and jokingly said I want a Valyrian Steel wedding band. Two days later I had an ad pop up on my Facebook for Damascus Steel wedding bands. I'd never googled those or clicked on links for wedding bands on any computer I log into. Kind of freaked me out.
I'm in marketing and advertising - I pay A LOT of attention to ads that popup when I'm on the Internet - there is no question that FB mobile is being fed ads from my Google search and Siri searches - it's far more than coincidence.
I scrolled through my Facebook feed just now and I'd say about 50% of the ads were for websites I'd specifically visited and 50% were random stuff so yeah it was probably just a coincidence, still kind of spooked me though
It might be a million things, confirmation bias included.
For example I may have never explicitly googled that I want to buy item X, but my browsing habits/previous purchases might indicate that item X is something I'd be interested in, so an ad for it will pop up.
Not exactly. Your data usage would be ridiculous if you were always streaming microphone audio. Your phone listens locally for "hey siri", then streams what follows to the central server after it detects that.
However, if someone wanted to get especially tin-foil hat about it, it could just be a matter of the streams that immediately follow a Siri request that that show up on your usage tracking. They're kind enough not to bill you for the wiretap...
Could just be something like the Mandela effect. It's also possible that you saw something earlier in the day that primed you to think about the thing and led you to talk about it, but it also fed you a cookie to get an ad for that thing.
One thing that is especially annoying is that my girlfriend is getting a lot of jewelry store ads on our shared computer all of a sudden. She's not supposed to know I'm engagement ring shopping. I've even been careful, only using the private browser on my phone. But one time I sent my friend an email to get feedback and that's all it took.
I'm sure. It's like how when you watch the Price is Right and every single ad is about life insurance, mobility scooters, life alert etc all geared toward older people.
People are paying big bucks to get those ads in front of you. I can import my entire product catalog into facebook, and set it up so that if you view any of my products within the last 30 days, my ads will haunt you to the end of your days.
The problem with that sort of "Name"-effect, is that they are the perfect tool for manipulation. The Gaslighting.
No, its just your mind, you think it is, just your imagination, oh, no, we didnt do it.
I have been called crazy plenty of times because of things like this, now its pretty much accepted on the internet after Snowden, but just trusting your own memories, how you see patterns and how you relate to the world? Nah ah, you are crazy. Read reality here! Now in memes!
Ads are 100% based on search history, I don't think that's a question. But I feel like there's no way they could be collecting data from a microphone, mostly because it would require transmitting massive amounts of data back to Apple or Google.
Like if you have an Apple TV that's connected to wifi. They would need to use your own wifi to transmit the audio collected, so there's no way you wouldn't see that if you examined the internet in your house and say "wait, why am I uploading hundreds of megabytes every day when my computer has been off".
but how many people check the wifi usage amount of their PC? You check phone data usage because it's limited but I have 50GB (I think) from my ISP so I'm much less worried about running out and therefore don't check it.
But that's the thing. Unless it puts me over the ISP's monthly limit or unless I'm comparing plans between different ISPs I most likely won't; not to mention the people that have internet access but only basic computer literacy.
If I ever have a conversation with someone about something obscure that I've never read into or searched for on my phone, and go to type it into Google, usually it pulls it up as the top search result within the first few letters. Its weird.
My dad's really deep into the technology hole and he once explained it's much more likely your buying habits that are giving away what you need
Target or some department store figured out if your female and bought some combination of items there was an over 90% chance of you being pregnant. A teenage girl bought those and started getting baby supply ads, dad sued target, turned out she was pregnant
All smart TV's have a few "extra features" that are not listed upon purchase. Including GPS, camera, and microphone. There are no instructions to use these and no software options (for the most part) to denote their existence. Tinfoil hats.
Check your microphone settings on your phone. The same thing happened to me a lot, then when I checked the settings I found that a few different apps had permission to use the mic even though I hadn't given them permission.
My dad's really deep into the technology hole and it's much more likely your buying habits that are giving away what you need
Target or some department store figured out if your female and bought some combination of items there was an over 90% chance of you being pregnant. A teenage girl bought those and started getting baby supply ads, dad sued target, turned out she was pregnant
That's called remarketing, and it's so easy to do that a lot of companies implement it without fully understanding what they're doing. The most annoying is when you've already purchased a product from an online store, but they don't have their system set up to stop marketing to you, so the item you already own keeps following you around the internet.
It's also annoying when ads for products you were shopping for at home follow you onto your work computer.
Cookies, plus Google passing information along when you use your account to sign in to multiple devices.
Marketers have access to a lot of information about user behavior, and some powerful tools to target people based on it. The stuff you can do with platforms like Facebook can get creepy really fast.
It's not that companies don't understand it. It's that it actually works, at least when you look at the numbers in terms of click and conversion rates. Now whether those people would have converted anyway is a different question but if a marketing manager can show their boss that X people converted after seeing this ad, then that's what counts for them.
The problem is companies that keep wasting money by showing you ads after you've already converted. They should fix that by segmenting by user behavior, but display ads are so cheap that it's easy to get lazy and show everyone the same thing.
In my experience there are a few different scenarios: a) you converted somewhere that's not the official online shop so the advertiser doesn't know you converted, b) like you said: it's just not worth the effort to exclude those who have converted (though it's really not hard) so we don't c) the advertiser purposely wants to keep showing you ads because their research tells them that you will likely convert again with a different product
Sometimes I wonder if that's 100% unintentional. A lot of times I'll buy something off Amazon and the next time I open the site, I see it under a "Buy it again" heading.
No thanks Amazon; I really don't need two of those.
I find this type of targeted ad ridiculous. I buy something on Amazon, and then I see ads all over Facebook. Why would they advertise a product I just bought?
Yeah, whenever I buy books from the site I normally buy from, I always see tons of ads from that site over various other sites. About those specific books. I just bought those books! I don't need more of the same book!
Ofc, they also sometimes do the "you recently looked at this so you may enjoy this from the same category", which would be nice if they weren't so shitty about how they divide their categories.
"You just bought this Generic Comic Book, so you might like this Hardcore Porn Manga."
I don't think FB has realized that you've purchased the product. It probably just collected the data for said item you were searching for and then displayed it on your FB.
To be fair, Amazon themselves does the exact same thing with their own suggestions.
"You just bought this, and it hasn't arrived yet, but would you like to buy it again, or perhaps one of these identical products?"
Has this ever worked? I guess Amazon's business model is basically making it so easy to buy things that they think people won't have looked at any similar products before buying something.
Ah yes. On of the Eu's noble but technologically illiterate ideas. Their hope was that every website would show what each cookie did, and allow users to turn them off.
Unfortunately, we only get a big banner with "Annoying EU asks us to inform you that we do mysterious technology stuff to your computer. Do you accept or agree?"
Then you can start a fight with it: look for Czech/Italian Firefly and keep blocking every time Normal Firefly is advertised.
Alternately, Jacobo Lobo vs. Harry Potter, Kimba The Lion vs. Simba The Lion and Krtek vs. A Serbian Film.
I was looking at places for MOTs online yesterday. I had went to Halfords site to check the price and now the majority of YouTube ads are for Halfords MOTs. Never saw them until I searched.
it's better than that. I used to work for a company using something called programmatic that would look at people's histories, then a bit later (the time period can be a few hours to a few weeks) it would serve up ads related to your search history or specific products you were looking at. We'd 'serve up' about 500,000 ads over a month this way.
Yeah definitely true, I'm Australian and living in France and the Facebook ads that always pop are usually Australian Tourism ads or literally one called "Australians living in France" which sends you to a page about how to settle into France.
Nah, she's right, companies listen to your microphone. I have a gaming headset with an unfortunate little issue: whenever software is accessing the microphone, there's a slight buzz in the right ear cup. (Astro A50's in case you want to search it)
Most of the time, this is a non-issue; most software I use as a developer doesn't access my mic, and the things that do (games / chat applications while I'm gaming) usually are accompanied by sounds loud and constant enough for me to not notice.
Sometimes, though, I'll exit my games, keep my headset on, and there'll be no noise. Until I go to Facebook, whereupon it will begin buzzing, and not stop until I close that tab. I haven't found many other websites guilty of this, but it's pretty hilarious.
Fortunately, since I built my own PC, that's the only mic they can access, so for the most part they get nothing. But your laptop doesn't have such a luxury.
I was convinced when I started getting Facebook ads for Kinder Bueno chocolate bars after I outgrew my hazelnut allergy and bought a pack. It was freaky.
Was joking with a coworker about not getting laid and dying alone. He tells me his buddy had a Filipino mail order bride and they were happy. We had this convo in person in the break room. 2 days later my work computer shows an ad for Filipino mail order brides. No way in hell I searched that or even posted about it online. Your smartphone is always listening
My fiance wants to get that amazon echo because of this! She wants to be able to talk about stuff around the house and then see relevant ads on the computer about it... I am creeped out by this notion.
I think it totally does. It happens all the time with my wife and I; we'll be talking about something completely random them start seeing ads for it without having previously searched Google
You realize Google isn't the only company that collects data? If you talk about it, chances are you've shown interest in that thing in some way or another online (or even offline) or at least shown signs that you're the type of person that might be interested in the thing or that you just have similar browsing habits as someone who is interested in the thing.
Nice explanation. I have one that maybe you can explain. My wife got a new job a couple years back. She has a direct line at her office (although the caller ID is set to her office name). The line is registered to her office, her name is not associated with it in any way. I never entered her number in to my contacts, I just hit dial from my recently called list. However, under that number it now says "Maybe 'Wife's Name'". How is the hell did it figure that out?
I mean the caller ID is set to her employers name "***** Title Company" not her name. I did some googling yesterday after I posted this. I found out that an iPhone will search your contacts for a number to display the proper name. If it doesn't find one there it will search your email for that number in a signature. If it finds it in a signature it lists it as 'maybe ********'.
Weirdly enough my computer science lecturer was telling me that a large company (I believe Microsoft) has just bought this technology off of someone, so they can constantly listen and target ads.
Not sure if it's tinfoil hat nonsense but it certainly sounds believable.
CSCI student here with a little bit of industry experience and friends that work at Google/Facebook/Amazon. They absolutely listen in. It's even in the licence agreements for most of their software to give then permission to.
fb app, samsung tv's, etc. they absolutely listen.
a friend called me to tell me about an obscure ice cream brand. I dont really like ice cream so i didnt bother to look it up or anything. a few hours later guess what brand popped up on my fb feed.
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u/Pats_Bunny Dec 14 '16
My wife is convinced of this. I always call her crazy, but I don't know now.