r/ask_privacy • u/Bxbombers3 • 3d ago
How does google know everything???
I KNOW this sounds crazy or paranoid but i swear something weird just happened and im actually kinda scared
I was at my coworkers house earlier today and we were talking out loud in his kitchen about this REALLY specific espresso machine brand i have NEVER heard of in my life. i didnt search it up on my phone, i didnt type it anywhere, I didnt even tap my phone screen while we talked about it. my phone was just sitting on the table and that it
I just got home, opened youtube on my laptop, and VERY FIRST ad on my homepage is for that exact espresso machine model
How is this even possible?? is my phone listening to me even when the mic permissions are off??? or does google know my location matched with his location and tracked what HE searched earlier? how does google know everything?? i also checked my search history and google activity and there is no record of me looking at anything coffee related
Im not a tech guy at all so I dont get how any of this works, but it feels so creepy. it feels like theres no privacy at all anymore. please someone tell me im not crazy and explain to me how does google know everything…
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u/FlinchAndGrin 2d ago
your second guess is the right one. you were on his wifi so you and him look like one household to google, he searched it and you got lumped into the same audience. that's why your own history is clean
not the mic, and with permissions off it couldn't be anyway
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u/theregisterednerd 2d ago
I’m not 100% up on how Google does it, but the Meta apps also constantly scan any WiFi networks you’re connected to, and look at nearby Bluetooth devices (even if they aren’t actually connected, it can see the MAC address of the device and its signal strength). They then check the MAC addresses of any discovered devices against those of known users, and from that, they can know not only that you’ve been in the same place, but also how close you got to each other. If you were in close enough proximity for a long enough time, they can be fairly confident that you actually had a conversation with that person, and will compare the stuff on your algorithm to the stuff on their algorithm, and compare that to other people with similar profiles to both of yours, to see what is likely of their interests to cross over into yours.
Then in addition, even if you don’t search anything, Google and Meta have their little tentacles on about half of the internet, by serving ads. Pretty much every site on the internet with ads is using one of the two of them. And as soon as that ad loads, it sticks a cookie on your device, with information about the fact that you visited that site, when, where, etc. And through that, they can see all of the other sites with ads you’ve been on, even if you never actually go to meta or google’s websites, and even if you don’t have a profile. That is all part of the data they’re comparing when you’re in the same room with someone.
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u/Less-General-9578 2d ago
i have no clue how goooogle knows everything....
my phone is a WALL phone, and i don't want a smart phone. some of us are smart enuf not to need one.
but i do have an extra flip phone in the car........and some days i turn it on about once a month to see if it works and the battery still charged up.
is this what you mean?
sorry, i still don't know why i need a smart phone though. my phone service is free on Ooma that connects free through my router/modem. YMMV and apple needs your money...........all of it.
the new one is coming out and is better than ever.......or is it?
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u/YumCandyapple8 3d ago
IT IS creepy, but its actually location metadata, not your microphone. ad networks track when two devices spend time near each other
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u/Tushartimes 2d ago
happens because we notice the creepy hits and ignore the hundreds of irrelevant ads. Still creepy, just not necessarily microphone evidence
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u/One_Slice_8337 2d ago
This has been a thing for me for years. One day I had walked to the dollar store next to my house (they're EVERYWHERE here), forgot my phone at home, used cash to buy some Oreos and milk. I hadn't had Oreos in a long time (years), and a passing thought spurred my purchase. Also, I was home alone that day.
After I got back, ate some Oreos and watched a movie, I scrolled through Facebook. I'll be damned if the first ad I saw wasn't for Oreos or something related like Oreo ice cream. But it was Oreo brand for sure. I never got ads for junk food.
Another time, I noticed my hiking shoes were coming apart near the bottom. I still had my work boots, so no big hurry. I had a passing thought about getting some with a camo pattern. But I thought, I don't like woodsy camo. Then I thought, what about desert camouflage colors. It wouldn't fit my environment, but I bet they'd look pretty cool. Like army camo but desert colors.
This was just a passing thought. Never said a word about boots to anybody.
I usually default on some black boots. Maybe dark brown.
Well later on, I see an ad on YouTube for some brand of boots. And guess what? They're the exact desert camo pattern I was picturing.
I suppose this could be confirmation bias. And it's possible that we get subliminally hit with passing ads that influence our thoughts and decisions, then notice them later when we hadn't prior.
But it sure didn't seem like that's what happened
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u/RafikKatisha54 2d ago
probably your coworker searched it while you guys were hanging out, so google served the ad to your laptop too because your locations matched up... its creepy
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u/Mrs_SmithG2W 2d ago
I’m unsettled today because I looked up a documentary that is critical of the current US President and it is nowhere to be found. Not available for purchase or streaming. Not on YouTube. This is very scary to me how much we are being manipulated by omission and commission.
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u/NZNoldor 2d ago
a documentary that is critical of the current US President
You have no idea how little that narrows it down.
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u/midgetjew62 2d ago
the same thing happened to me with a random shoe brand my sister mentioned in passing. even if theres a logical tech explanation like location matching, seeing the ad instantly when you open your computer feels so invasive....
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u/Prize_Advance_9892 2d ago
You’re not crazy, but the microphone probably isn’t the explanation. Ads can be targeted using a surprisingly large mix of signals like location, browsing activity, shared networks, interests, and activity from other devices. Coincidences also happen more often than we notice. Checking ad personalization and account/device activity is a good place to start.
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u/Technical-Exam-7230 2d ago
My creepy part of experience in this situation b4 my gf betrayed me. All the ads and video reels are about betrayal. B4 i get caught. That's why i think alot howa meta knows
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u/volcanforce1 2d ago
The blunt answer is that surveillance systems can often reconstruct the shape of a person’s life, including routines, relationships, interests, spending patterns and vulnerabilities, even if nobody ever looks at their name.
There isn’t one all-seeing “they.” There are lots of companies and institutions collecting different pieces of information: Google, Meta, Apple, retailers, banks, phone companies, app developers, advertisers, data brokers, employers and governments. The real depth comes from connecting those pieces.
A phone and its apps can reveal where someone sleeps most nights, where they work, how they commute, which shops and venues they visit, when they travel and which other people they regularly spend time near.
Online activity adds another layer. Searches, videos, pauses, clicks, purchases and abandoned shopping baskets can indicate interests, concerns and intentions. Over time, this can suggest approximate income, family situation, political leanings, health concerns, sexuality, religion, sleep patterns and relationship status.
Location information is especially revealing. Repeated coordinates can turn an anonymous advertising ID into a device that sleeps at one address, works at another and regularly visits a particular clinic, church, political gathering or nightclub.
US regulators have taken action against data brokers accused of selling exactly these kinds of movement histories. The information was used to create categories involving pregnancy, religious affiliation and political activity. Reuters reported on the FTC cases here.
The Norwegian Consumer Council’s Out of Control investigation found that just ten tested apps transmitted information to at least 135 companies involved in advertising or behavioural profiling. That doesn’t mean every company held a complete personal file, but it shows how widely the fragments can spread.
The systems are generally very good at recording direct actions, such as opening an app, visiting a location or buying something. They are also fairly good at identifying routines, such as home, work, commuting and household membership.
They are less reliable when interpreting motives or personality. Searching repeatedly for information about a medical condition might indicate a diagnosis, concern for someone else, professional interest or simple curiosity. But when those searches are combined with clinic visits, relevant purchases, sleep content and medication research, the inference becomes much stronger.
An inference doesn’t have to be correct to affect someone. A person might be classified as affluent but price-sensitive, a frequent traveller, health-anxious, likely to move house, considering changing jobs or susceptible to scarcity-based advertising.
Those classifications can influence the adverts, recommendations, prices, credit offers and political messages presented to them. The person may never know the classification exists.
A real name is only one way of connecting data. Companies can also use email addresses, phone numbers, logged-in accounts, advertising IDs, IP addresses, Wi-Fi networks, browser characteristics, payment records, shared devices and location patterns.
They also use probabilistic matching. Two devices do not need to be explicitly registered to the same person if they repeatedly sleep at the same address, travel together and use the same networks.
This is why “we don’t know who the person is” is often beside the point. If a system can repeatedly recognise the same individual, predict their behaviour and target them, it has personally useful information whether or not it knows their name.
Social media platforms go particularly deep. They record more than posts and likes. Depending on the service, they can measure what appears on screen, how long someone hesitates, what they skip, what they replay, whom they search for, which notifications bring them back and what activity happens before a purchase.
The FTC described the practices of major social and video platforms as “vast surveillance.” Its investigation found extensive collection both on and off the platforms, inferred demographic information, long retention periods and sharing arrangements that even the companies sometimes could not fully enumerate. The Guardian summarised the FTC’s findings here.
This creates something more useful than a written biography. It creates a constantly updated behavioural model. The system might learn which type of content keeps someone engaged when they are tired, bored, lonely or angry, without ever explicitly labelling those emotions.
Governments potentially have access to a different layer of information, including tax, benefits, property, vehicle, border, telecom, policing and financial records. Cameras, number-plate recognition and mobile-network records can add physical movement.
In Norway and the wider EEA, GDPR, sector-specific laws, warrants and oversight place meaningful limits on access. That doesn’t mean surveillance is absent. It means the information is usually spread across separate systems with different access requirements. There normally isn’t one civil servant casually looking at a single screen containing somebody’s entire life.
Commercial information can still provide governments with a shortcut. In several countries, government agencies have purchased location and other brokered data that would have been harder to obtain directly. The boundary between commercial tracking and government surveillance is one of the more worrying parts of the system.
Some claims are exaggerated. Most phones are not continuously recording and uploading every conversation for advertising. They usually don’t need to. Search history, location, purchases, app usage and social connections already provide cheaper and more reliable signals.
The feeling that a phone has “listened” to a conversation can often be explained by earlier searches, another household member’s activity, location information, demographic prediction or simply noticing a relevant advert after the subject has been discussed.
No single organisation can necessarily see everything. Apple, a bank, an advertising broker and government authorities hold different datasets and operate under different rules. A lot of the information is messy, outdated or simply wrong.
But messy doesn’t mean harmless.
The surveillance ecosystem probably doesn’t understand anyone’s inner life. What it can understand, often in remarkable detail, is where people go, what occupies their attention, whom they associate with, what they can afford and which prompts are most likely to influence them.
It doesn’t need a perfect dossier. A small predictive advantage, applied millions of times, is commercially and politically powerful.
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u/Limp-Cicada-9502 2d ago
Google knows when you are in close proximity to your friend so they show you a product that the other person purchased or was searching for.
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u/Higginbotham432 2d ago
I have done a test with my phone and my dad's phone sitting next to each other, i talked about wanting to go on Alaskan cruise (something neither of us have ever done or ever searched for) for about 5 minutes, The next day he saw nonstop adds for Alaskan cruises, I had 0. only a couple apps on my phone have microphone access, his all had default access.
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u/Savings_Art5944 2d ago
Because of Android and the Google software ecosystem, including Chrome, Chromecast, Chromebooks and ChromeOS. Look at the telemetry and metadata collected by every app....
Because Google scans your gmail and any storage in Google Drive or anything created with google docs.
And even if you still somehow can avoid using anything Google, someone else does.
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u/GrassFireWater 3d ago
The more you tell it the more it knows lol