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I think google is spying on us ,when our phones are in the room

I was talking about something a few minutes ago , and when i opened youtube , i got an ad on the video ,about the same thing i was talking about ...how do they know ? if not spying ...
Same weird ads i got this month a lot ...

Do you guys noticed same precise ads on your devices also ? Like they know what you want,need etc ....do you get that feeling "how did they know ?"

https://www.news18.com/news/tech/google-admits-listening-to-some-user-conversations-via-assistant-report-3914696.html

Same thing happened to this guys:
https://www.quora.com/Are-Google-and-YouTube-spying-on-us-over-the-microphone-I-ve-seen-suggestions-in-YouTube-that-I-have-never-searched-for-The-only-way-they-knew-is-by-listening-through-my-microphone-As-my-friend-recommended-me-to
https://www.quora.com/Is-Google-listening-to-me-all-the-time-via-my-Android-smartphone

This isn't anything that new, though a lot of people are still clueless about this.

There's a reason why when using Android devices, it's highly recommended to flash a privacy-friendly custom ROM such as LineageOS[1], GrapheneOS[2], or CalyxOS[3]. Unfortunately only select phone models are supported though.

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[1] https://lineageos.org/
[2] https://grapheneos.org/
[3] https://calyxos.org/

And you realize it now? Well, better late than never. Yes, google does not spy, and it is best to take precautions, as mk4 comments. There is a growing business, which is on its way to becoming the biggest business in the world and that is data.


Yes, many years ago the same thing happened to me that has happened to you now.

May be may not be well i have very fixed Openion on it as i don't know how people think that Anything is Private in the Digital World, if you consider my Openion Privacy is a Myth in the current era,

Spiesare in our pocket as Smartphone,
No malwar required, Watsapp, Games,Facebook, Insta YouTube is the enemy to your privacy and it is obvious as well as you better know that DATA is everything in digital world so they eat your data and let you ise the internet.

What were you talking about?
Maybe you have previously searched in Google or Youtube by using keywords around the topic you were talking about and Google/Youtube are sending you relevant ads? It's obvious that Google is tracking our browsing and web activities, but using our smartphones as spying tools seems a little bit exaggerated. I know that they have the power and ability to do so, but what's the point? Nowadays almost everyone has a Google account/Youtube account and uses Chrome browser on an Android device. If it becomes too obvious that Google is spying on us, many people would just delete their Google accounts and root their Android devices. It's not that the Google alternatives aren't as bad as Google.
Do you think that Apple won't spy on it's customers? Privacy is something utopian in the current digital world.
 

If you watch Snowden. Than you will get an idea how our privacy is been exposed on the computers and internet. In this world of internet and 3G and 4G.
Nothing is personal. This getting the same ads is also coming from your internet fiber cable - whatever you see and search you get ads of it. It's very common.
If you are worried - then keep phone away from your bedroom.

Not only google but every app that contains ads that we just hit the agree button without reading it.

They're like that and I don't know how do they call that but it's like an algorithm and everything that our phone hears from us, it's quick to register for those ads and they'll show to our feed.

The same goes for search for our PCs, whatever we search, there's the algo for the ads that will eventually come out later on.

You guys don't realize how serious it is if they spy us via the phone microphones ...it's not like spying chat msgs ... govs , secret services need a warrant to do that and Google does it without asking anyone permission or notifying the users. What the f...ck is going on ,we are living in a corporate police state world ...

they spy us via the phone microphones < -- it's illegal guys ,FBI needs warrant to tap phones , and Google does it without asking permission etc...

Yes, I had the same case last year. I am using an old iphone and use facebook to keep in touch with some friends. Once my friend and I were talking and accidentally mentioned the toy bear, because it is very beautiful and I think my son will like it. I asked my friend: do you know where it sells?. When I got home, I turned on my phone and played on Facebook and was quite surprised to see so many ads about the toy bear I talked to my friend about. Actually, I was quite surprised but also did not pay much attention to why this happened. It's only when it happens a few times that I start to think that the devices we're using are spying on us.

Similar thing happens in real world but people are more asleep to notice... If you are interested in something you gradually start seeing it. If you want to attract good things, be interested in good things. The creators of the internet probably copy this from nature but you can't trust them not to abuse it.

Whatever you search for a certain IP - everyone using the same IP will get the same kinds of ad. The internet world is very intense - have you notice there were so many games on fb where they use to ask to access your personal info and you willingly give access. Why do they do that. That is because they have now legal right to get your personal access..

Dear op, that's how targeted marketing works! Android operating system is a part of the ecosystem they have created so that they can maintain and increase their dominance.

Let's assume you sell mobile covers of Samsung Galaxy Note phones. You can precisely target all Galaxy note phone owners within a specific geographic range. You can refine the ad serving towards a certain age group and you can precisely target those people who likes to do online shopping. Privacy is a myth in today's world. It exists only on papers.

The same for Facebook too. But I'm sure they all know that but they did nothing or did they already?

And not only with the microphones but also with the cameras. So be careful with what you agree in permissions because it's important to have at least knowledge on what you allow and what you not.

Even if FBI sues google, they'll just pay them the fine.

I have the same thing happen and it is probably widespread behavior, definitely something suspicious taking place there. That being said, their advertising or analytics javascript is found on so many pages it's quite possible that they might be able to connect the dots via other methods. They are turning out to be a really scummy company these days, far from their original motto of do no evil. They are much more benign, but possibly more dangerous than a company like Amazon because of the information they have access to - especially when it comes to manipulating news or even individual politicians who might want to take restraining actions against them.

Realistically there's no point changing now, they've already got all the data they needed ;).

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Most of these systems work of recommender algorithms. It's like how you can have the same thought of other people at the same time and how the likelihood of your thoughts being the same for a specific point in time is proportional to how well you know that person.

Recommender algorithms essentially come up with an angle based on a lot of data about you and then try to work out who else has a similar angle and pushes content they like towards you (it's a lot more accurate and picks up data from more people when there's millions or billions of users).
the use of the word angle is because a sizable amount of trigonometry goes into producing these algorithms.

I have disabled recommendation systems wherever possible. The good news is that this is possible everywhere, although recommendation systems are usually enabled by default. The bad news is that your news feed will become less interesting after this, and the ads will become less attractive. The good news is you'll waste less time and buy less junk you don't need. You have no chance of defeating self-learning artificial intelligence while sitting at home in a comfortable chair in a bathrobe and house slippers. But you can prevent it from learning from your behavior on the network, and this is not even too difficult.

It’s strange for me to talk about this on the Bitcointalk forum, but it seems that a new generation of cryptocurrency users has grown up who don’t know about cypherpunks.

To be honest this sounds funny abit but why i may not have a doubt about it is because google itself is a centralized network and in the world of a centralized system i don't think there's anything called privacy even though they may claim it that you have it, but believe me its all lies, but as regards the aspect of spying your talks or conversations Is another thing entirely of which i believe google has the power to do such but wouldn't, and no recent devices made from them that opens up users to their access other than the normal tracking which is more likely not to function well if the location is off, but listening to your conversation has something to do maybe with your device, or you been hacked, your experience might just be a coincidence.

That is a good approach - i will do also look for the options to disable the recommendation.
Also you have mentioned the very valid point that as the internet has brought us many comforts it has stolen from us the privacy and our identity. I miss those time when social media was not that common.

Once you do make yourself connected to internet then dont consider yourself to be in private 100% on just by using your device alone and surfing website then you are already giving that bridge and considering

about those ads which it does really shows up which would really be correlated on what you are recently or actively searching on which there would really be some crawling happening
towards your surfing history which it is really into their algo that it would be providing related stuffs and be thrown out into you through ads
which isnt something new.

First time? Then you should really get used to it because thats how it works or business do.

I think we are almost all aware that state-sponsored survaillance is ongoing for ages. I watched a small clip (not sure it was only click bait or true) where Edward Snowden says that he removes the microphones of his phones (and probably cameras too) so that his conversations cannot be recorded/spied on. While searching for this clip I also found this interesting documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaUemcqIQ-k.

There are alliances world wide taking care of all the survaillance our states need, like PRISM, 5 EYES and others.
Check this for example:

https://nordvpn.com/blog/five-eyes-alliance/

and this one too

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Eyes

One other on PRISM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM

And finally this one should give us a general overview about the stage we are at on Global Survaillance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance

Damn scary, to be honest!

The last link you have mentioned talks about Snowden. If you happen to watch Snowden than surly you will be able to realize how much we are exposed to the agencies and surveillance authorities. That is how the spy work - they are smarter than we even think. But of course there is no stopping to it. We have exposed ourselves to them by bringing in smart these devices.

They are smarter today that even when you just think about something, you can instantly see an ad on your phone about what you just thought. Without mentioning anything but only thinking about something like "cooking pancakes" you might just see an advert about it on your phone.

Try that. These bots are already going into our minds. Whats funny is that they are checking us whether we are bots thru the captcha.  ;D

LOL - i dont think these bots are that advanced that they will be able to read the minds of the people.
However - your searches on the IP address can bring in the same kind of ads on all the devices at the same IP address.

I think it's not just the IP address that we are talking about here since the pattern that I noticed was like when you see a certain words it automatically registered or shown up in your search bar. They can read what we are reading and at the same time they know what was your ideal type to search hence your caches/history in internet browser is affected which then they will show you what are your type of reference you wanted.

heheh, I wouldn't go that far either, but probably close.
Once I heard about this technology Facebook was using that allowed them to collect data from pixels in your phone screen, reconstruct an image and target ads according to that reconstructed image or something similar to this.

It's ridiculous what technology allow people to do. When we think about this, AI, robots, Alexas and Co, I really think we are kinda doomed! That's why we need to give more importance to our sovereignty, privacy, intellectual and private property!

Yes, this is true, Google has been spying on us for a long time, but few people know that. Some people think that spying is through writing or browsing websites only, but the fact is that spying is done through the microphone and through the camera as well. There are also applications to spy on someone By recording all phone calls, as well as recording all surrounding sounds remotely, as well as the possibility of operating the camera remotely, monitoring the call log, Facebook conversations, Telegram, WhatsApp, locating and all these things that may not occur to many.
The only difference is that the spy apps need to be implanted on the victim's device and give it the required permissions there, but Google has all the powers that you gave it to it when agreeing to the terms of use.

It is nowadays VERY difficult to keep your privacy at a high level.  With smart TV's collecting information about what you are watching, smart phones collecting all sorts of information about you in a very intrusive way, Google and Alexa listening to what you are saying all the time and everything else going digital and 'smart', you are pretty much invaded by surveillance and control over the life of yours that is supposed to be private.

I suggest doing one of two things.  Either de-Googling your phone or flashing a privacy focused ROM like mk4 said.  There are pros and cons obviously, the largest ones being that de-Googling removes bloatware and spyware while maintaining device security and on the other hand privacy increasing ROM's such as Lineage may get you rid of everything Google related but only by decreasing device security.  It has been proven before that Lineage OS may be more privacy friendly but the security risks may not be worth the change.

On the other hand.  While for Android devices this is obvious, keep in mind the same surveillance is happening on Windows devices as well.  You just notice it less.  So my advice is that if you make this change on your Android device, then move on from using Windows as well and maybe get rid of your Smart TV and Alexa.  Whatever is 'smart' today is mostly a spying device that we voluntarily introduce in our houses.

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Regards,
PrivacyG

It happens the same to me very often. If I speak about something with my wife or my friends and after few minutes I open internet I see ads related to my discussion.
They are definitely spying on us in order to give us targeted ads.

Think about those people who use Alexa & Apple Home  products. They’re even worse than Google, I don’t know why people use these type of things, it’s so bad for their privacy.

I use them. But I admit I'm really worried about my privacy. The problem is that I love tech and all my home is handled by Alexa. Songs, lights, even window shutters.

Interesting. If you think it's because of your microphone which google can access then why not turn it off on the settings? Every app should have an option if you will allow access to them. Actually, I found out the same thing long time ago and I even search this on google out my curiosity, while I don't think this was because of our microphone but for me I think it was because of our search history. That's what google gets an idea and suggests you with a keywords that are close to it.

It's weird and shocking at first but once you get the hang out of it, you will say that it was helpful because we can save too much time typing the same thing.

You can't "turn the microphone off" , they can control your phone no matter what you do ... if battery is not removed ... why do you think they removed from new smartphones option to remove battery ?

I am definitely a bit cautious when it comes to Google potentially listening in on my calls or even recording my passive conversations when I’m not on the phone. It may sound paranoid but I am very suspicious of Google and I question their ethics.

They certainly have the technical ability to listen in and they haven’t shown much restraint historically. They consistently have shown a disregard for peoples privacy in the past and I have seen little evidence of them taking responsibility for it. I would rather be on the safe side and be a bit overly cautious but that’s just me.

I am not joking - but I visiting a friend yesterday - and the kids and every family member was throwing the phone here and there because they also thought that they are being spied by their phones and they are being listened and heard and seen through their phone - I was like shocked for a moment - what is everyone doing ???I suggested all of them to have a session with psychologist!

WE are living in the world where we have also accepted so many terms and conditions to give the company's permission to use our personal data and share it with anyone we wish to. So we cannot blame anyone for the leak of personal info - but we are solely responsible for all this.

Snowden said that a long time ago, so why should we be surprised?

Damn, I thought I was randomly popping up ads for what I want.

A World where both the ignorant and illiterate ones are allowed to Accept Terms they do not understand or without the guidance of qualify people like lawyers to help them make the right choices. Wish the Terms & Conditions are clear and simple to understand, and they must be moral. It's not for example right for companies to ask people to accept Terms that go against the rights that have been guaranteed to them naturally. And it's important to always reject them publicly even though you have accepted the terms. If they do otherwise or go against your own Terms they could get punished, not necessarily by human govts. Who exactly? Well, there are things I would rather not reveal.

Same thing happened to me over and over. And I had never talked about that topic before, so Google didn't get that from my search history or something.
The thing that bothers me is that no one talks about this. I only saw a good show with John Oliver that takled the issue and he interviewed Snowden!

Snowden shows how we have been watched by our laptop cameras and phone camera. But we need a device to be seen. Its not possible that phone is switched off and computer is shut down and we have been observed. A year go all my office colleagues watched the Snowden. And placed a paper patch on their laptops. My Boss showed so much displeasure - but now we have to live with it.

our phones are already so advanced, that i can only think about smth, even not saying it out loud!! and my phone in a couple of days gives me ads with the items i was thinking about. this is just crazy! has it happened to anyone of you?

That is not our speech and thought which gives the ad option - maybe it is the text we type in for others. And the google get their recommendation from there.
But I disagree that that google listen to us and then do as they want.

Snowden is good show many people follow him. . and he has changed the perspective of people all together.

But what would an ordinary person profile would do the google who is only searching XOXO and gambling and alcohol

I also don't want to believe in it, but sometimes it just gets crazy how smart google can be!!

That happened and happens to me very often. It sounds like a joke but it's real. We also discussed with friend and we did several "fake" tests which all went positive. We cannot say it is Google or any other app but the signs all point to Google. We flashed old mobiles from scratch and didn't install any other app. No facebook, no tik tok, nothing at all, just stock firmware. We also have lineage and other ROMs flashed. It happened with ALL of them, but only to them shipped with Google app suite. To the phones we installed with custom roms without bloat ware and no Android Google Play store (we used F-Droid instead) this did not happen one single time. So we suspect that Google is the part who is spying.

This is definitely no coincidence or something like that because we tested with many phones and many persons with various settings. Absolutely, someone is spying and we suspect that it is Google.

Just my $ 0.02