Is Your Phone Listening to You? | NOVA | PBS

A product you were just talking about pops up in an online ad. How? Advertising algorithms are so good that they may know what you want even before you do.

Calling all NOVA superfans to join our new community! Get access to exclusive content, badges, emojis and more:

Follow on social for more NOVA content

[hanspecans]

“But that’s against the law”
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂

That has never stopped any company from doing

[djp]

Yes, it's listening. Sometimes my coworkers talk next to me about subjects I'm not interested in, and next thing I know, I'm seeing ads for those things.

[youngKarl]

No, random conversation with a friend about a not popular foreign film, next 20 minutes that exact film appears in my youtube feed on my phone. They are listening!

[Surdalegacy]

I heard it said, "If the service is free, you are the product"

[jcortese]

I love how the video says that listening is against the law. Like that ever stopped multi-billion dollar corporations before. Besides, they can do it as long as they don't get caught, and how do you prove it?

[Pooks]

I often get ads and recommendations on things I only discussed with someone, but I’ve never shopped or searched for. So yes, I believe our devices are listening to us, it’s not always an algorithm.

[CensorCipher]

I’m 100% positive my phone was listening to me. I had a phone call about a very specific product at work — one that I’d never used or searched before — and within hours I started getting ads for it for weeks. This happened on a bunch of different occasions with other topics I hadn’t searched. After I uninstalled the Facebook app from my iPhone, it never happened again. I’m fairly sure that was the app that was listening to me.

[phillipdavis]

I say BS. I have had other people bring up topics that I have not thought about that we then discussed. Then, when I get home there are ads and YT videos regarding that subject.

[albertoserrano]

Futurama's Dream-A-Vision where subliminal Ads are sent to your dreams for advertising while sleeping lol

[cristinawilliams]

I swear they used to call this illegal surveillance. The law didn’t change, did it?

[michaelcaprio]

Having worked in the industry for as long as I have, and seen firsthand the behaviors of leadership in these companies, Occam's Razor tells me that they will absolutely break the law and listen to conversations and take the shortest path to getting the results they want. It also tells me that 95% of technologies like "big ad data" do not actually work and are hyped up vaporware, and that it would be next to impossible for them to have the success rates they've had with matching up things I've only said out loud and have never ever once visited another web site for.

[LauraJeanne]

I beg to differ about not being listened to. A couple of years ago, a coworker and I were talking about it so decided to do an experiment. Neither of us owned a cat but discussed what brand of cat food we should get for our cat. Shortly after that I started to get advertisements about cat foods on my social media. I did not touch my pho.e durimg the discussion and did not look up anything about cats or cat foods. So the only way it could have happened was if it was listening in on our conversation. Up until then I never got ads for cat food.

[JonnoPlays]

The phones are listening and it has been proven. There is an entire department at Amazon and Apple where they listen to voice commands that were not understood to try to improve their ability to understand all voice commands. Many of these misunderstood voice commands are people who are engaged in sexual activity with their phone in their bedroom and weren't intentionally trying to engage their voice command feature. I know this because of good journalism, which this video is not sadly. The phones are listening and they're trying to act like since it's illegal the companies would never ever do it. Yeah right.

[rachellight]

This isn't always true. I've actually had ads pop up on crap I've never been interested in nor searched for and had for whatever reason ended up popping on my phone after someone I was talking to brought it up. It's happened to me on several occasions and is so annoying.

[DanCooper]

Who the heck actually buys something advertised to them? I make it a point to ignore ads.

[Metalmatte-.]

My phone sits on my desk. Coworkers talk about x. X now appears on my phone. There was no influence.

[Misteribel]

I believe there's a CNN video where they experiment with this idea, and they manage to prove that their phone is indeed listening.

[broke]

Idk why but no one has been talking about the fact that we discovered an ocean in the mantle. I would love for you to shed some light on this quite new interesting discovery.

[RestynPeece]

You give your phone permission to listen to you. It IS listening to. Algorithms are used ALSO not instead of.

[antinatalope]

What I can tell you is, many a time that I have a conversation, YouTube will have that in my recommendations feed. And that's even talking without my phone, but a contact's phone near me.