Proof that Facebook is listening

[RangerPooh]

This weekend we discussed getting a bigger Solo Stove. When we got home from a wet, cold camping weekend our fb ads were for Solo Stoves.

 

[tinkerdorabelle]

yes and Alexa . Freaky times

 

[mom2rtk]

They're definitely listening. We drove past a store called 5.11. I had never seen or heard of before and I asked out loud "what's that?". Moments later there was an ad on my phone. Way too coincidental for such a niche shop. And I certainly hadn't looked it up or ever searched for the merchandise they sell.

Not a fan.

 

[Avery&Todd]

We don't have an Alexa or anything connected like that since DH doesn't want anything "listening"....and yet when he looks for stuff on the internet, those same items show up as ads on my FB feed.

I always call him out for looking for odd things!!

 

[BadPinkTink]

Just thought I'd drop a little thing called geo targeting ads into the conversation. Basically they are ads which target mobile phones in a certain location. For example if you walk past Bath and Body Works, the ad will be triggered.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722043?hl=en
Google Ads location targeting allows your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose: countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location, or location groups, which can include places of interest, your business locations, or tiered demographics.

Location targeting helps you focus your advertising to help find the right customers for your business. This specific type of targeting could help increase your return on investment (ROI) as a result.

Online advertising is a very lucrative industry and the tech involved would blow your mind. Basically you are all fair game for the ads once you are connected to the internet by any device, and half the time you are not even aware that you are connected to the internet and being targeted.

 

[TLSnell1981]

Just thought I'd drop a little thing called geo targeting ads into the conversation. Basically they are ads which target mobile phones in a certain location. For example if you walk past Bath and Body Works, the ad will be triggered.

https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/1722043?hl=en
Google Ads location targeting allows your ads to appear in the geographic locations that you choose: countries, areas within a country, a radius around a location, or location groups, which can include places of interest, your business locations, or tiered demographics.

Location targeting helps you focus your advertising to help find the right customers for your business. This specific type of targeting could help increase your return on investment (ROI) as a result.

Online advertising is a very lucrative industry and the tech involved would blow your mind. Basically you are all fair game for the ads once you are connected to the internet by any device, and half the time you are not even aware that you are connected to the internet and being targeted.

What is it called when you are sitting in your living room discussing an item and it appears on your FB the next time you log in?

 

[BadPinkTink]

What is it called when you are sitting in your living room discussing an item and it appears on your FB the next time you log in?

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ads-listening-to-you-2019-5
There's a wildly popular conspiracy theory that Facebook listens to your private phone calls, and no matter what the tech giant says, people just aren't convinced it's not true
Ben Gilbert
Aug 14, 2019, 4:05 PM

There you were, talking to Gina about a potential trip this fall to Buenos Aires. "Maybe I'll go to Buenos Aires this fall!" you said. "Or maybe Lisbon! Who knows!"

Hours later, idly scrolling through Facebook and — what's that? An ad for vacationing in Lisbon? How could it have known?

Look no further than CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King, who related a similar story to Instagram head Adam Mosseri in an interview in June.

It's perhaps too familiar of a story at this point. A cliché. "Facebook is listening to my conversations!" you tell Gina. "I know it." And she's sympathetic. Maybe she even has her own story about something very similar happening to her.

"Can you help me understand how I can be having a private conversation with someone about something I'm interested in seeing or buying, and an advertisement for that will pop up on my Instagram feed?" King asked. Even after he explained how it could be happening, King wasn't convinced. "I don't believe you!" she said. "I don't know how this happens repeatedly.

The belief that Facebook and Instagram are listening to users through their smartphones, then serving ads based on that spying, is extremely pernicious.

It crosses generations, race, gender, and income brackets. Your conspiracy-minded uncle and members of Congress and your favorite morning news anchor are on the same page for this one. Everyone, it seems, believes that Facebook and Instagram are listening in on them.

And no matter how hard they try to tamp down that belief, it persists.

Back in June 2016, Facebook issued a statement.

"Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone's Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories," is its headline.

The copy of the post goes into more detail: "Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people's conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is not true. We show ads based on people's interests and other profile information — not what you're talking out loud about."

It was a direct response to a news story that ran in May 2016 from an NBC outpost in Florida that purported to prove that Facebook was listening to users. "Facebook is not only watching, but also listening to your cell phone. It all starts with enabling your microphone feature in your settings. Once you do, choose your words carefully," the piece says.

The proof in the piece was anecdotal — a professor interviewed by NBC enabled microphone access to her Facebook app, briefly talked aloud about potentially going on a safari, and, "Less than 60 seconds later, the first post on her Facebook feed was a safari story that seemed to pop up out of nowhere."

It's exactly these types of stories that embolden the belief that Facebook is listening to your conversations.

The root of this belief goes back further, to 2014, when Facebook added a feature to its smartphone app for identifying music.

In May 2014, Facebook introduced a new feature that could identify the music around you and use that information for a status update. The feature required users to give Facebook's app access to their phone's microphone, and their phone alerted them to this fact.

The feature would indeed share data with Facebook based on your phone's mic, but it wasn't intended to pick up on conversations as well.

Still, the idea that users were being asked to give the app access to the mic with the explicit purpose of listening for data that Facebook gathered was enough to get people worried. The company was forced to issue an update to its announcement with some clarifications.

"Facebook isn't listening to or storing your conversations," the update says. That was over five years ago, and far from the last time Facebook would have to issue this denial.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Congress in April 2018, he was asked by lawmakers about this exact thing.

Of the many questions that US lawmakers had for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his congressional hearings last year, one line of questioning from both congressional bodies stood out: Was Facebook listening to users, and then serving ads based on that spying?

"Something that I've been hearing a lot from folks who have been coming up to me and talking about a kind of experience they've had where they're having a conversation with friends — not on the phone, just talking. And then they see ads popping up fairly quickly on their Facebook," Senator Gary Peters said during Zuckerberg's Senate hearing last year. "I've heard constituents fear that Facebook is mining audio from their mobile devices for the purposes of ad targeting — which I think speaks to the lack of trust that we're seeing here."

When Peters asked Zuckerberg directly if Facebook was doing that, he directly said, "No." Zuckerberg called it a "conspiracy theory."

The same line of questioning, with a similar anecdote, came from Congressman Larry Bucshon during Zuckerberg's testimony to the House. Zuckerberg denied the allegation once again, and said, "Someone might be talking about something, but then they also go to a website or interact with it on Facebook because they were talking about it, and maybe they'll see the ad because of that."

There's a good reason so many people are paranoid about Facebook: The company has given people plenty of reason to be paranoid.

Over the last several years, it seems like Facebook has hopped from privacy scandal to privacy scandal.

Whether we're talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or the 2016 presidential election, or any of the other myriad stories of Facebook mishandling user data, selling user data, or losing user data, the company has a major trust issue on its hands.

Just this week, another scandal: Facebook is apparently listening to and transcribing some users' audio chats.

As Senator Peters put it during Zuckerberg's hearing in front of the US Senate, "I think it's safe to say very simply that Facebook is losing the trust of an awful lot of Americans." Peters was speaking specifically to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but the statement could apply to any number of these recurring instances.

The company denies it's listening, up to and including its CEO stating as much to Congress, and the belief is undeterred.

Simply put: The reason so many people believe that Facebook is listening to them is because people don't trust Facebook.

Though Instagram hasn't had as many public dust-ups, it's guilty by proxy — Facebook owns Instagram, which puts the two platforms are similarly shaky footing in the trust department.

There are arguments to be made about the legality of Facebook and Instagram listening to their users, as it would be illegal to collect audio recordings from people. And there are arguments to be made about how useful that information would even be, as it would require an immense amount of processing to be used to serve ads.
But the strongest argument for why Facebook and Instagram almost certainly aren't listening to you and serving ads based on that is far more damning: Because they already have way, way more detailed information about you.
People voluntarily offer a massive array of data every time they use these applications, from how they're feeling to where they are to what they buy and who they know. Both are eerily good at serving ads because they have an absurdly large trove of information about you and your habits based on how you use them. Perhaps more importantly, Facebook has hooks all over the web, so your activity outside of social media often turns into usable data as well.
The social media giant doesn't need to listen in on your conversations to serve you ads — it already has all the info it needs.

Don't believe us? Here's how to disable Facebook from using your phone's mic.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, disabling microphone access to Facebook is a snap:

-Open Settings.

-Then tap Privacy.

-Then Microphone.

-Select Facebook, and disable access. Easy!

A similar set of instructions works for Android:

-Open Settings.

-Select "Apps & notifications."

-Select "Advanced" at the bottom.

-Select "App permissions."

-Select "Microphone," and disable Facebook. Maybe disable Instagram and WhatsApp too while you're there, as both are owned by Facebook.

 

[LuvOrlando]

Remember before now when people would get mocked with derision for complaining about the intrusion and trying to warn us all. I sort of think the world owes them a big apology, that tin foil hat dig was wrong.

Also, to all the preppers who caught shade, post Covid me would also like to say - you right, my bad.

 

[BadPinkTink]

Facebook doesn't need to "listen" as you give it all the info without realizing it. I do Facebook ad campaigns for clients. Basically if I had enough budget from a client, I could show ads for an extremely niche product to the exact people who will buy it in a very small location.

You know how you everyone has Facebook and logs into Dis on their phone. Well Facebook now knows you are interested in Disney.

You know how you have your relationship on Facebook, not even linked to your SO but just that you are in a relationship? Well now you will get added to the pool of people that advertisers who want to target people in a relationship will send an ad to.

You know how you LIKE pages on Facebook, well that info gets added to the data for advertisers. We can target people who have a specific interest in a specific location.

From an advertisers point of view, its so much fun to set up ad campaigns as we can get huge amounts of info from Facebook users.

 

[BadPinkTink]

ooops, my bad, I guess while I'm spilling the tea and telling you all how you give so much info to Facebook without realizing it and how advertisers are using your info, I guess I should post this

As they say mind... blown... oopssie bad me

https://adespresso.com/guides/facebook-ads-beginner/demographic-targeting/Location-based targeting
Facebook allows you to target people in specific locations, including:

• Country
• State/Region
• Counties
• DMA (Designated Market Area)
• City
• Postal Code
• Specific Address Radius
• Everyone in this location (the default targeting option) – The last updated location of an actual Facebook user
• People who live in this location – Location is set by the location on a user’s Facebook profile and confirmed by their IP address.
• People recently in this location – Tracked by mobile device usage in the geographic area you intend to target.
• People traveling to this location – Users who had this geographic area as a recent location that’s at least 100 miles away from their home location.

Detailed targeting includes political views, life events, job titles, ethnicity and lots more

Interest based targeting includes Facebook users’ likes and interests, apps they use, Pages they’ve Liked, and lots more.

 

[TLSnell1981]

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-ads-listening-to-you-2019-5
There's a wildly popular conspiracy theory that Facebook listens to your private phone calls, and no matter what the tech giant says, people just aren't convinced it's not true
Ben Gilbert
Aug 14, 2019, 4:05 PM

There you were, talking to Gina about a potential trip this fall to Buenos Aires. "Maybe I'll go to Buenos Aires this fall!" you said. "Or maybe Lisbon! Who knows!"

Hours later, idly scrolling through Facebook and — what's that? An ad for vacationing in Lisbon? How could it have known?

Look no further than CBS This Morning anchor Gayle King, who related a similar story to Instagram head Adam Mosseri in an interview in June.

It's perhaps too familiar of a story at this point. A cliché. "Facebook is listening to my conversations!" you tell Gina. "I know it." And she's sympathetic. Maybe she even has her own story about something very similar happening to her.

"Can you help me understand how I can be having a private conversation with someone about something I'm interested in seeing or buying, and an advertisement for that will pop up on my Instagram feed?" King asked. Even after he explained how it could be happening, King wasn't convinced. "I don't believe you!" she said. "I don't know how this happens repeatedly.

The belief that Facebook and Instagram are listening to users through their smartphones, then serving ads based on that spying, is extremely pernicious.

It crosses generations, race, gender, and income brackets. Your conspiracy-minded uncle and members of Congress and your favorite morning news anchor are on the same page for this one. Everyone, it seems, believes that Facebook and Instagram are listening in on them.

And no matter how hard they try to tamp down that belief, it persists.

Back in June 2016, Facebook issued a statement.

"Facebook Does Not Use Your Phone's Microphone for Ads or News Feed Stories," is its headline.

The copy of the post goes into more detail: "Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people's conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is not true. We show ads based on people's interests and other profile information — not what you're talking out loud about."

It was a direct response to a news story that ran in May 2016 from an NBC outpost in Florida that purported to prove that Facebook was listening to users. "Facebook is not only watching, but also listening to your cell phone. It all starts with enabling your microphone feature in your settings. Once you do, choose your words carefully," the piece says.

The proof in the piece was anecdotal — a professor interviewed by NBC enabled microphone access to her Facebook app, briefly talked aloud about potentially going on a safari, and, "Less than 60 seconds later, the first post on her Facebook feed was a safari story that seemed to pop up out of nowhere."

It's exactly these types of stories that embolden the belief that Facebook is listening to your conversations.

The root of this belief goes back further, to 2014, when Facebook added a feature to its smartphone app for identifying music.

In May 2014, Facebook introduced a new feature that could identify the music around you and use that information for a status update. The feature required users to give Facebook's app access to their phone's microphone, and their phone alerted them to this fact.

The feature would indeed share data with Facebook based on your phone's mic, but it wasn't intended to pick up on conversations as well.

Still, the idea that users were being asked to give the app access to the mic with the explicit purpose of listening for data that Facebook gathered was enough to get people worried. The company was forced to issue an update to its announcement with some clarifications.

"Facebook isn't listening to or storing your conversations," the update says. That was over five years ago, and far from the last time Facebook would have to issue this denial.

When Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg testified in front of the US Congress in April 2018, he was asked by lawmakers about this exact thing.

Of the many questions that US lawmakers had for Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg during his congressional hearings last year, one line of questioning from both congressional bodies stood out: Was Facebook listening to users, and then serving ads based on that spying?

"Something that I've been hearing a lot from folks who have been coming up to me and talking about a kind of experience they've had where they're having a conversation with friends — not on the phone, just talking. And then they see ads popping up fairly quickly on their Facebook," Senator Gary Peters said during Zuckerberg's Senate hearing last year. "I've heard constituents fear that Facebook is mining audio from their mobile devices for the purposes of ad targeting — which I think speaks to the lack of trust that we're seeing here."

When Peters asked Zuckerberg directly if Facebook was doing that, he directly said, "No." Zuckerberg called it a "conspiracy theory."

The same line of questioning, with a similar anecdote, came from Congressman Larry Bucshon during Zuckerberg's testimony to the House. Zuckerberg denied the allegation once again, and said, "Someone might be talking about something, but then they also go to a website or interact with it on Facebook because they were talking about it, and maybe they'll see the ad because of that."

There's a good reason so many people are paranoid about Facebook: The company has given people plenty of reason to be paranoid.

Over the last several years, it seems like Facebook has hopped from privacy scandal to privacy scandal.

Whether we're talking about the Cambridge Analytica scandal, or the 2016 presidential election, or any of the other myriad stories of Facebook mishandling user data, selling user data, or losing user data, the company has a major trust issue on its hands.

Just this week, another scandal: Facebook is apparently listening to and transcribing some users' audio chats.

As Senator Peters put it during Zuckerberg's hearing in front of the US Senate, "I think it's safe to say very simply that Facebook is losing the trust of an awful lot of Americans." Peters was speaking specifically to the Cambridge Analytica scandal, but the statement could apply to any number of these recurring instances.

The company denies it's listening, up to and including its CEO stating as much to Congress, and the belief is undeterred.

Simply put: The reason so many people believe that Facebook is listening to them is because people don't trust Facebook.

Though Instagram hasn't had as many public dust-ups, it's guilty by proxy — Facebook owns Instagram, which puts the two platforms are similarly shaky footing in the trust department.

There are arguments to be made about the legality of Facebook and Instagram listening to their users, as it would be illegal to collect audio recordings from people. And there are arguments to be made about how useful that information would even be, as it would require an immense amount of processing to be used to serve ads.
But the strongest argument for why Facebook and Instagram almost certainly aren't listening to you and serving ads based on that is far more damning: Because they already have way, way more detailed information about you.
People voluntarily offer a massive array of data every time they use these applications, from how they're feeling to where they are to what they buy and who they know. Both are eerily good at serving ads because they have an absurdly large trove of information about you and your habits based on how you use them. Perhaps more importantly, Facebook has hooks all over the web, so your activity outside of social media often turns into usable data as well.
The social media giant doesn't need to listen in on your conversations to serve you ads — it already has all the info it needs.

Don't believe us? Here's how to disable Facebook from using your phone's mic.

If you have an iPhone or iPad, disabling microphone access to Facebook is a snap:

-Open Settings.

-Then tap Privacy.

-Then Microphone.

-Select Facebook, and disable access. Easy!

A similar set of instructions works for Android:

-Open Settings.

-Select "Apps & notifications."

-Select "Advanced" at the bottom.

-Select "App permissions."

-Select "Microphone," and disable Facebook. Maybe disable Instagram and WhatsApp too while you're there, as both are owned by Facebook.

Conspiracy theory? It happens. One specific situation ..my 3 year old washer is on the blink. DH spent half a day trying to locate parts. We were discussing the issue and it popped up on my FB. He didn't google nor does he have a FB. We do not share on our devices either. Very targeted and random...

 

[LuvOrlando]

A cell phone has a microphone.
A echo has a microphone.
I don't believe the firesticks have microphones.

I think you can go into your cell phone settings and turn off microphone access to various apps. However, I wonder if it's FB listening in or Google.

It keeps prompting me for Alexa and voice control so the newer one is different.
I say no but it's like a bad date who won't stop asking.

Best guess is it's data harvesting for improved machine learning AI with the possibility of data capture for deliberate draw down when wanted. We should be allowed to have devices without an invasion of privacy.
Easy answer, if all these devices were called phones because voices move both ways (Alexa is a communicative voice) the laws that already stand would be more protective.

 

[sam_gordon]

It keeps prompting me for Alexa and voice control so the newer one is different.
I say no but it's like a bad date who won't stop asking.

 

[mom2rtk]

Conspiracy theory? It happens. One specific situation ..my 3 year old washer is on the blink. DH spent half a day trying to locate parts. We were discussing the issue and it popped up on my FB. He didn't google nor does he have a FB. We do not share on our devices either. Very targeted and random...

No way mine was random either. It wasn't just based on my geographical position. I've been past that store a number of times before and since. Only the one time that we said the name of the store out loud did we get an ad for the place.

Plus, I don't believe a word they say about what they are and aren't doing.

 

[MrsCobraBubbles]

They're definitely listening. We drove past a store called 5.11. I had never seen or heard of before and I asked out loud "what's that?". Moments later there was an ad on my phone. Way too coincidental for such a niche shop. And I certainly hadn't looked it up or ever searched for the merchandise they sell.

Not a fan.

This I could almost explain because Google tracks your location. Lol, it's freaky that the ad would pop up as soon as you said something though!

 

[SC Minnie]

My mom had bunion surgery last year. Whenever we talk about how her feet are recovering or any part of her surgery it's usually in person. Within 24 hours I'm getting bunion surgery places in my FB feed ads.

 

[mrodgers]

I'm confused. You mean you were talking on the phone and then something related showed up on your Facebook? No I have not experienced that. Websites I have visited generate ads all over the web, including here on the Dis.

No, not talking specifically on your phone. It is listening all the time. You can be talking to coworkers at lunchtime with your phone in your pocket and later will see ads based on what you were talking about with your phone just sitting in your pocket.

I have something better. On the motorcycle, phone inside my pocket. I slowed down to look at a VW GTi in someone's yard for sale, just slowed down and looked at it. When I got home, VW ads all over my Facebook. I never said anything, I was alone on a motorcycle. Facebook read my mind and knew what I had looked at.

 

[mom2rtk]

This I could almost explain because Google tracks your location. Lol, it's freaky that the ad would pop up as soon as you said something though!

Not buying it. I'm by there about once a week. Never mentioned the name of the place before. Never got any ads. The single time I spoke the name of the store was the only time I got an ad.

 

[ENJDisneyFan]

All the time. Just happened 5 minutes ago actually. Son asks me to buy him a pair of “Hey Dude” brand shoes. We discuss for maybe 3 minutes. Walk into my office and pick up my phone, open FB and “Hey Dude” shoes ad is the first thing to pop up. Phone wasn’t even in the same room while we were talking!!

 

[jsmith]

Hiding your SSID does literally nothing for you, those frames still are passed through the air and easily readable from just about any client

True statement-but it does inhibit your neighbors who may even be less computer savy than you from piggy backing on your network and further exposing you-inhibit not prevent. My in laws used the girl upstairs wifi for a couple of years until she had a problem that my mother in law wanted me to fix-which required my mother in law to fess up. Both the neighbor and my inlaws were not tech smart-the girls boyfriend was and nicked my mother inlaws banking passwords which she insisted on storing in a browser.
She didn't have a password and my laws assumed if they could connect to it it was provided by the cable company-the boy friend didn't want her to use a password and stop his fun. So while it doesn't really prevent anything it at least is not leaving the door open.