Are phones listening?
Aussies freaked out by targeted online ads
THERE you are, shooting the breeze with a mate, and randomly mention that great holiday destination you’d love to visit, or those boots you’ve been coveting, or whether that new, must-have kitchen item is all froth and no bubble.
An hour later, you’re scanning Facebook or Instagram, and up pops an ad for the subject you were talking about.
“It can’t be coincidence,” you think to yourself. Then you steal a look at the likely suspect. Was your smartphone listening to you?
You’re not alone. Nearly one in five Aussies – about 3.2 million people – say they’ve had a conversation about a product or service, only to see an advertisement pop up about it on their social media feeds not long later, according to a new survey.
Comparison website finder.com.au polled 2085 people and discovered 18 per cent of Aussie adults are highly suspicious of smartphone surveillance.
About one in eight (12 per cent of respondents) are “totally freaked out” by thinking their devices appear to hear what they say; and six per cent believe it’s the trade-off for getting a free service like Facebook or YouTube, the survey revealed.
Aussies aged 18 to 23 proved most paranoid: 37 per cent of them were convinced their smartphones were listening in on their conversations and exploiting that knowledge.
Generation Y were next most suspicious (33 per cent), compared to 12 per cent of Generation X-ers and just 4 per cent of Baby Boomers.
So is your smartphone really listening? Well, not to the conversation you had with your mate, but quite probably to the “conversations” you have when you go online, says finder.com.au tech expert Angus Kidman.
“There’s no need to get the tinfoil hat out just yet – there’s no evidence that smartphones themselves are ‘listening in’,” Mr Kidman said.
He says the most logical explanation for that item you were talking about with your friend materialising in an ad on your social media feed may just be you are noticing it more.
It’s human nature to look for links and patterns, when in actuality most of the time it’s just a coincidence. We often remember an ad when it seems topical, but forget all the times that we’ve scrolled past other ads and never even noticed it.
That said – there’s a reason that ad was even there for you to scroll past in the first place – and your smartphone definitely has a role to play here.
Your online history – likely largely built on your smartphone – means it’s no coincidence you are targeted by certain products in your Facebook and Instagram feeds.
“It is insights gleaned from websites you visit and online retailers you shop with,” Mr Kidman said. “There are plenty of apps monitoring and recording your every move.”
So don’t blame the smartphone. Blame what you do with it. How to see less of those dreaded ads?
Check the settings on your social media accounts.
“You can’t stop ads on Facebook – if there were no ads it wouldn’t be free,” he said.
“But you can cut down the stalker vibe by going into Settings, selecting Ads, choosing Ad settings and making sure every option is set to Not allowed or No-one.”
Check your smartphone settings and disable access to your microphone in your apps. You might need to toggle it on and off for when you do need to record sound to Skype a relative, but at least when it’s not needed, you know it’s off.