Does Your IPhone Listen To Your Conversations With People?

Discussion in 'Computers & Tech' started by Seth Bullock, Apr 10, 2021.

  1. Seth Bullock

    Seth Bullock Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Today I went over to my elderly mother-in-law's house to help her out with something. We chatted for a while, and she told me she had macular degeneration in her eyes, and she talked about what doctors can do for it.

    Less than an hour later, I was back home and went outside into my back yard to do some work, but it started raining on me. So I wondered what the rest of the day was going to be like, so I grabbed my IPhone and opened the Yahoo Weather app to see today's forecast.

    I took a screenshot of what I saw. Look towards the bottom of the picture and read what it says.

    Weather app (2).png

    I have had friends report the same thing - merely talking about something, and all of a sudden getting flooded with ads for that exact same thing.

    Has anyone else experienced this?

    I am interested in hearing from all of you about this.

    Seth
     
  2. Chrizton

    Chrizton Well-Known Member

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    It probably does. I recall reading a story a few years back where an iphone saved the life of a man who was trapped under a car when he shouted for help.
     
    Last edited: Apr 11, 2021
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  3. Steve N

    Steve N Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    My Android listens to my conversations and I get ads based on what we talked about. The reason I'm sure about this is she owns a horse and was talking about horse bridles, and this was face-to-face and not on the phone. I then began getting ads for horse bridles and other horse stuff.
     
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  4. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    Yes Seth. This keeps happening to me as well. I check something out, might be a book, a product or an idea and next thing that happens is I get ADS on the topics.
     
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  5. MJ Davies

    MJ Davies Well-Known Member

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    This is why I disable the voice command features. People are annoying enough. I don't need my phone to nosy too. LOL
     
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  6. Seth Bullock

    Seth Bullock Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I understand that, though. If you look at a product on the internet, that info is shared, and you get ads for similar products.

    But in this case, the dang phone did that by simply listening to a conversation! It friggin listens to you and shares that information!!
     
  7. Robert

    Robert Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    What I do different is I NEVER use my cell phone to be on the Internet. (save weather reports)

    I do not have a mike plugged into my desktop. I notice however my fire tablet listens to my desk top talking and replies to the desk top system.
     
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  8. FreshAir

    FreshAir Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    I see same with google, you can disable, but then you still get the ads, they are just not targeted to you anymore
     
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  9. crank

    crank Well-Known Member

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    All modern phones do. You can test it easily if you're doubtful. Talk about something obscure or 'non standard'. The sort of things which aren't usually advertised randomly.

    We're run tests on Android and The Other phones, and it works EVERY time. It might not happen instantly, but it will almost always be within the next 24hrs.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2021
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  10. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The price for convenience is giving up privacy.
     
  11. kazenatsu

    kazenatsu Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    The data that these electronic devices collect on consumers without their knowledge is considered very valuable, and helps allow more targeted advertising.
    A lot of these companies earn huge amounts of money by selling this data information. Marketing firms will pay lots of money for lists of contacts tied to data about them connected to key words of types of things they might be interested in buying.

    Think about it, even if this automated information collection is wrong 90% of the time, that could still be 10 times higher than advertisements targeted to people at random.

    It's all handled by computer algorithms and artificial intelligence.
     
    Last edited: May 7, 2021

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