We’ve all had that one experience where we had been talking about something that we wished to buy (it could be a new laptop, a smartphone, or whatever), and not long after, we see advertisements of the products that were in the conversation. This has led to many to believe that our electronic products like smartphones, tablets, or smart speakers could be spying on us. But is that really the case? Let’s find out.
This phenomenon isn’t just exclusive to gadgets and could even include certain medicines, furniture, and much more. Thus, when you see an ad online talking about a certain product (which you need) going on discount at a store near you, one would naturally assume that your very own smartphone is spying on you. However, a recent test from the UK’s Daily Mail has suggested that this might not be the case.
The test was conducted by setting up a new Google account on a Samsung Galaxy smartphone that was factory reset to ensure that this is how the device would function straight out of the box. For the test, a 22 year old named Robin was created and a fake Facebook account was also made for this fictitious persona. Following this, daily Mail talked about the names of products nearby for two days straight to see if this impacted the advertisement that were being displayed online through the Galaxy handset.
However, the test found that the smartphone wasn’t eavesdropping on any of the conversation around its vicinity since it did not receive any online ads that were related to said products. In other words, your device is probably not listening to your conversations and is likely tracking your activity based on the products you search for or click on online. Jordan Schroeder, the person that head’s the firm’s network security , also added that OEMs don’t need to listen in on your conversation since there are plenty of other ways of collecting the data that they need from your smartphone.
To further prove this point, Daily Mail used the fake Robin’s account on Google to search for ‘luxury car’ and ‘expensive bed’ using Google Assistant and even Google Search. Follow this, the ads targeted online were all related to cars from high end brands as well as bed companies. Google took it a step further and also created a webpage with brands that Robin want to potentially check out.
For those interested, you can find your personalized page by going to myadcenter.google.com. This is the webpage that basically compiles all the topics and brands that you have been interested in. Keep in mind that this feature won’t work for those who have their personalized ads switched off. One can even customize the settings to receive lesser or even more advertisements related to particular topics or specific brands from the My Ad Center website.
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