Comment by darknavi
1 year ago
Why did they pick a swimming pool? Did they see people in their area installing pools? I think that's often people's best guess, is that the "random" thing people use to test this actually isn't random and subconsciously they already had this topic seeded to them.
Something similar -- while on a family visit at my parents' house, my brother was talking about his upcoming Hawaii trip, Specifically he was going over a snorkeling adventure he signed up for.
For the next week or so, I got many ads on my phone about underwater packages for Hawaii, along with ads for various snorkeling and swimming gear. Now I had never researched any of that on my phone, however obviously my brother has. And the ad trackers saw that both my phone and his had communicated out over the same IP address (my parents wifi) on other random internet connections, so that is probably why they were then targeting my tracker cookie with ads that would be related to his tracker cookie. (This is all technically "easy" for the trackers to do, and seems logical that they would, because "why not").
On an unrelated note, I was making a peanut butter sandwich, started browsing some sites, and started getting ads for Skippy peanut butter. My phone must have smelled the peanut butter in the air.
Until my wife installed UBo, this was helpful in finding presents for her. Because I was using UBo, I could switch it off, browse Facebook and all of my ads were being targetted at her. I could see everything she was considering buying.
It was impressively creepy and a good way of surprising her with something she hadn't said anything about but was considering buying.
You have hit the nail on the head but it doesn't even need to be wifi and it also doesn't have to be that complicated. They see that two devices are in the same area for a long period of time so they serve ads for other peoples web history. Jarringly enough ever since I had this realization I sometimes see ads for things that reveal something meant to be private of those I had just spent time with. Also, seeing peoples ads when they make desktop recordings of their screen can be extremely telling..
Exactly. Years ago, I did due diligence on a company that targets ads using IP address. They buy IP address data from ISPs, target ads based on demographics, and then use cookies to retarget. Not that far off of what you're describing.
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I think he makes this exact point in the 5th and 6th lines of his comment?
1 reply →
I know my iPhone isn’t listening to me. And I know about my friend’s activity influencing the ads I get served, and my demographic, and location, and all of that. And my random idea for a test word being predictable in a shocking way.
But, recently I started thinking about the average user, who will install anything and approve any permissions requested without reading it. And imperfect App Store reviews approving a Trojan horse accidentally.
Am I positive someone hasn’t inadvertently allowed mic access to a malicious party? I wonder if that person’s phone may, in fact, be listening to them.
Ugh how long until a new freemium model comes out where you can either pay with money or pay with microphone access…
using multiple high value advertising targets would be best. like specific brands of mattresses or industrial equipment.
No, they deliberately chose a topic they had absolutely no interest in, to try and avoid confirmation bias. It’s not impossible that what you describe is actually what happened to an extent though, a lot of the recommendations and ads on FB do seem to have a “what people around you / in your network like” factor.
You also need to do the opposite experiment Have two people put their phones in the microwave (don't run it!) / turn them off, discuss swimming pools (or jacuzzis etc), and see if you suddenly start seeing ads for said thing. And then you would have to repeat this experiment several times to rule out outliers
Experiment design is important! I completely believe that this happened to your friends and I also don't think it means what you/they think it does
(That is: you need to completely isolate yourself; music practice room on a college campus where nobody is wearing a watch or phone and repeat the experiment. If it turns out that you still see ads for that thing, then the experiment didn't prove anything)