This has freaked me out

[BananaDunka]

Well yes, this is well known. Do you have Facebook or WhatsApp installed on your phone? Do you have the microphone enabled for either of them?

On Android you can easily check recent component access history from any apps that used mic/camera etc. It should be really quick and easy to actually see if any of the apps on the phone used the mics to listen during that work period. Android now also notifies you if an app uses the mic or camera in the background. This is part of the security measure brought into place since Android 13/14 if I recall. The default permission for accessing these features for any app is to prompt the user to either allow always, or only whilst the app is in use, or deny entirely. You can check these in app permissions from within Android Settings.

if it did not, then it's a simple case of the algo putting two and two together, someone in that office at one point or still does, a connection between the two people and the algo has recognised this past connection and has probably targeted Nitro PDF ads to all parties involved to accounts it has seen as related.

 

[Blackjack Davy]

Facebook even shared your DM's with advertising partners looking to push their content on you:

Facebook let Netflix see user DMs, quit streaming to keep Netflix happy: Lawsuit

Facebook Watch, Netflix were allegedly bigger competitors than they let on.

arstechnica.com

always listening

Heard a joke about that the other day. My partner came in and said she's worried she thinks our devices are listening in us. Ridiculous I said and just laughed. And Alexa laughed, and Siri laughed...

 

[Fire Wizard]

Reminds me of this!

I have read a couple of articles about this. I have always assummed incognito mode was only relevant to the local device. It's merely a tool to keep other people using that device from seeing your browsing history, and it does nothing to stop your ISP and / or Google from knowing your search history. That was my impression anyway.

 

[plasmahal]

 

[plasmahal]

Yea smart phones listen to you and then arrange adverts based on what it thinks you are interested in.

It's as simple as that.

Yeah, sure, and chem trails are a thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[danlightbulb]

Definitely phones listen. I've discussed things before and then within the day you see an advert for it on Facebook.

 

[Vandle]

I had always though it was part coincidental and part due to the phone apps being able to see your browsing history across all the devices you access such as work computers etc. Reading about hotels in Bali at lunchtime on my work laptop then seeing ads for airline companies pop up on my phone later in the day isn't that surprising (it IS surprising how ok we have become with it though), however, I swear this is true, a year or two ago I was part of a conversation with my Mrs and her mate talking about how their menstrual cycles start to synchronise when they spend a lot of time together which I found grimly fascinating. The next day had adverts for Tampax on my facebook feed. I have some suspect search history but nothing that plums those depths!

 

[[FnG]magnolia]

Google search: Brie Larson, magnolia, likely romance?

Real life outcome: "Why is Brie Larson coming up on my facebook ads, dad?"

 

[Jokester]

Definitely phones listen. I've discussed things before and then within the day you see an advert for it on Facebook.

I was involved in a discussion in a WhatsApp group about a specific type of whisky and then started getting adverts for the very bottle we had talked about (so much for WhatsApp being secure!).

Several instances of things where my phone was listening (non-stick pans) and also using GPS to make suggestions - was visiting a new housing estate looking at property and started getting adverts for personalised door numbers straight away.

 

[Rroff]

Definitely phones listen. I've discussed things before and then within the day you see an advert for it on Facebook.

Nominally I don't think phones are actively listening - but I do think there is some kind of triggering using some kind of priority list of keywords (i.e. brand names) going on with some apps.

One I've mentioned before - I wasn't very well but being the only person available to run the shift dragged myself into work and installed Netflix on my phone as a distraction (spent my shift lying down in the staff room) - normally I'd disabled microphone permissions but not being well I wasn't paying much attention and left it on, though I only made the link to this afterwards. At one point I was talking to a colleague and mentioned dosing myself up with Sudafed when I got home - cue getting ads for Sudafed a few hours later which I'd never ever got before that. Over the next few days there was certainly a pattern between some ads I was getting, which weren't ones I normally saw, and certain brands or products I mentioned in conversations, until I uninstalled the Netflix app (was the genuine app as well).

 

[Feek]

My daughter bought a Nissan Juke last year. Before she got it, I'd never noticed a Juke on the road but once she got it, I started noticing them, there seemed to be absolutely loads of them. She's now sold it and I don't see as many.

I never noticed Mazda 6s on the road until I got one, then I immediately started seeing them.

I wonder how much of this is the same effect and if it's actually just a perception thing.

 

[Demon]

It's probably because you've logged into your personal google account and your NHS google account using the same machine at some point. Or maybe you've logged into facebook at work once. Now google and/or facebook know the two accounts are linked in some way. So any cookies on one machine may be relevant to the other machine.

They can link advertising IDs off all kinds of spurious stuff, same name, same sites visited and they put two and two together...


Mind you OP describes a trash security model for the NHS where people just download any old crap, install see if it's any good...

No wonder they get hacked regularly.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

They can link advertising IDs off all kinds of spurious stuff, same name, same sites visited and they put two and two together...


Mind you OP describes a trash security model for the NHS where people just download any old crap, install see if it's any good...

No wonder they get hacked regularly.

@Demon
Woah dude no I didn't and you'rer talking complete crap..
IT installed the trial version for me so you need to take that back.
We can't double click EXE files.

 

[LeeUK]

I was talking to a regular in my local clurb not long ago and he got on about Amazon and he was talking about the Channel 4 documentary made by some guy called Oobah. I had never heard of it but later on when I got home after sinking a few pints I put YouTube up on my TV and the first recommended programme to watch was this said documentary.

Yes phones are listening.

 

[mid_gen]

It shouldn't do but for years I've said phones listen to us but perhaps there is another explanation.

Yesterday at work I log onto my NHS PC and I get an email off a colleague to read up on Nitro PDF Pro and whether it is suitable for our department.
Three of us use Adobe Professional but the rest of the team need it and at £499 a license for the standalone it's too expensive.
From my NHS account I go to the Nitro site and sign up with my NHS email to download a trial version.
I spend the day working with it and it does everything we need to do in the department for £190 a license and one free for every 3 we buy.
Over my version of Adobe Professional I've asked if I can also have it.
So to summarise I'm on my NHS PC with all my NHS logins and I have zero access to Facebook.
I even have an NHS Google account.

I get home and the first thing I see on Facebook is a Nitro PDF advert with a buy 3 and get one free advert.
WTF
I've had 3 so far.

Explain how this has happened other than me talking about it in the office please.

Tracking cookies. Logged into anything on your work PC that you have logged into on your home browsers? Big Ad will have made the connection.

Probably don't even need the cookie information, simply that your advertising profile on your work browser is identical to your home one, so when you go looking at product X, it starts showing it to people with a similar profile.....i.e. your home browser.

 

[Demon]

@Demon
Woah dude no I didn't and you'rer talking complete crap..
IT installed the trial version for me so you need to take that back.
We can't double click EXE files.

Woah yourself.. why so mad?

I assumed you didn’t have local admin rights (orgs haven’t allowed this for 20 years) to run an installer that required elevated privileges, my comment is aimed at the speed and presumed lack of process (because of the speed) at which you can just download, (get) installed and trial any old software..

At a large multi-Nat I previously worked at you had to request any trials via IS (information security), full out a form to justify, get that signed by your senior manager, then IS would analyse it for suitability, not on functionality but on security.. they’d install and check in a sandbox what it was doing, they’d check out the company that created it and did all manner of stuff.. this took at least a week for non-essential stuff and often have them (condescendingly) telling me how it wasn't suitable for my needs without any knowledge of our workflows/use cases..

Even now, I work in an ISO27001 environment which is required by many hospitals before we can sell our equipment.. I’ve worked heavily with IT/IS on a workable set of practices to satisfy 27001 whilst not being too prohibitive, but even then if we want to trial new tools like this it can still take 2-3 days to get it agreed.. not that long ago someone suggested Fox-it for pdf’s, something I’ve used many times and is much cheaper than Adobe, but it failed the security screening audit as it’s had some vulnerabilities in its recent past.. odd because Adobe have had major data breaches but that's how it is.

I would expect the NHS to be far stricter, that is my point..

In fact I was literally in a day ward yesterday watching bad practices in action.. The member of staff(seemed to be the doing a purely admin role) was filling in an online form on a site that did not look very official (loads of adverts around the edge) then printing it.. All led to clogging up the print queue and causing the PC to lock up ahead of us wanting to leave and needing our discharge form printing and delayed us 40 minutes, leaving my wife who had just has two lumbar injections in pain sat on a hard chair whilst they sorted it.. The issue was which ever site the form was being printed from clearly had some issue as it locked the browser and the print queue.. once she closed the web browser the print queue started emptying, 15 copies of her own forms (5 pages each).. causing it to run out of paper, leading to more delays, and all the time I'm thinking of this very thread. I know it wasn't work related because a nurse grabbed one of the copies of the form and made no bones about it..

 

[Nasher]

Anything with voice commands and no "push to talk" (Alexa, google, etc) is always listening. It has to be otherwise how does it know when to respond. You can stop ad tracking using simple browser add-ons though, as well as all the ads themselves.

It's one of the reasons these things are not allowed in secure environments. State intelligence agencies are all over it.

Windows also has a hidden log file of every single thing you do on it.

 

[xiphrex]

It's 100% your phone - its listening.

 

[SexyGreyFox]

I would expect the NHS to be far stricter, that is my point..

My colleague already had an older version of Nitro PDF Pro 7 on her machine but when her PC broke they refused to install it again because it was so old.
Yes I downloaded the trial but our IT have already installed Nitro PDF Pro 14 on quite a few PCs so they already have it and they suggested it to my colleague.
Stop filling blanks in with your own crap

 

[Andre]

Had an unexplainable one yesterday:
Colleague sent me an image in Teams (web version) of a JSON document saying "I've added these new fields"
I logged in to my works VM, loaded Rider and opened the class file, started typing the new fields in and once I'd typed the first, it suggested the next four for me