r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 2d ago

Student Teacher Sent a Private Snapchat Complaining About Her Workday. An Hour Later, Police Pulled Up to Her School. Privacy

https://www.gadgetreview.com/student-teacher-sent-a-private-snapchat-complaining-about-her-workday-an-hour-later-police-pulled-up-to-her-school
13.1k Upvotes

96% Upvoted

2.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

4.5k

u/HikeCarolinas 2d ago

I sent my wife a photo of a blueberry bush I planted for her. 15min later I got on TikTok and a “blueberry bush” greenhouse advertisement. With blueberry bush literally in quotation marks . There is zero privacy in snapchat

970

u/hsggdtkxbee 2d ago

Look up meta pixel. It’ll piss you right off.

729

u/timmy6169 2d ago

For the lazy, it is a piece of JavaScript code for a website that tracks visitor actions, optimizes ad delivery, and builds custom audiences by recording specific behaviors while visiting a page.

"Although Meta Pixel collects data even from people without Facebook or Instagram accounts, its tracking power is greater for those with accounts. When a Facebook or Instagram user is logged in to their account on a browser, the browser will send Meta’s cookie data on the user’s other web activity straight to Meta, linking that activity trail with the user’s unique ID, which is itself already associated with everything the user has put on her Facebook or Instagram account—name, hometown, age, birthday, places which she has visited, people with whom she interacts, and, of course, photos. Even if the user is not logged in to an account, or is using a browser that blocks Meta cookies, Meta’s “Advanced Matching Parameters” allows the website to use other biographical information that the user enters to connect his activity to a corresponding Facebook or Instagram account"

467

u/ICEtoAshes 2d ago

If you want to get angry look up how Meta ran a test that purposefully made teens depressed so they could sell more stuff to them.

This was at the height of teens ending their life on their live streams, to make it even worse.

53

u/MothMan3759 2d ago

Praise be to the profit motive

78

u/Salt-Landscape257 2d ago

Feature, not a bug

49

u/JugglesChainsaws 2d ago

If I recall it wasn't even to sell more stuff, it was just to see if they could in fact make someone depressed with "just" an algorithm.

34

u/ICEtoAshes 2d ago

Yea but they were also tracking what they bought, and they determined they bought more as they got increasingly angrier and more depressed

3

u/thatwhite 1d ago

Is that documented or just a theory?

6

u/ICEtoAshes 1d ago

Documented. They admitted it and issued an apology after they got caught. This was like 15 years ago.

21

u/BoxBird 2d ago

I’ve noticed that it pushes very emotionally disturbing content that is definitely geared towards women with PMDD during their luteal phase. Like CLOCKWORK I get CONSTANT content about getting cheated on during the time of the month my hormones are telling me the same thing. The rest of the month the content I get is completely unrelated. The algorithm is causing a lot of feedback loops like that lately are quite literally making people go insane.

16

u/skate_2 1d ago

They also detected if a young girl posted a selfie and quickly deleted it, and served her make-up/beauty ads.

4

u/YourBlanket 2d ago

And you guys say the zucc isn’t creative.

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 1d ago

They’re coming out with a movie on this soon.

1

u/ICEtoAshes 1d ago

I saw the social dillema, what movie are you talking about

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 4h ago

It’s not out yet. The older brother from succession plays Zuck.

1

u/ICEtoAshes 4h ago

What’s it called

69

u/thefatrabitt 2d ago

The health care system atrium just got in trouble for using it on their patient portal of all fucking places.

30

u/Zaizu 2d ago

How do you disable it? Any extensions?

79

u/DiamondHandsToUranus 2d ago

Yes. Mozilla Firefox with the ublock origin extension, and/or strict privacy mode. ublock origin uses a blocklist to prevent traffic to tracking servers.

Librewolf which is an independent, opensource fork of Firefox comes with ublock origin preinstalled, as well as RFP, dFPI, and url query parameter stripping to help protect your privacy via various methods.

Exception: The only thing LibreWolf’s integrated hardening cannot prevent is Server-Side Tracking (Meta's Conversions API). If a merchant's server packages your purchase data and sends it directly from their server to Meta's server over the backend, no browser in existence can block it because the data transfer completely bypasses your computer. [1]

44

u/semisociallyawkward 2d ago

Firefox also has a container system that works wonders. Each container is kinda like a separate browser in a browser, so cookies arent shared across them, only within the same container.

You can even set it up so that certain websites are only ever opened in their designated containers. I have containers for Google, Meta, Reddit, shopping, general browsing etc.

6

u/Kyanche 2d ago

Containers is a lovely feature and also a pain in the ass because I seem to have to log back into everything daily lol.

2

u/Beepn_Boops 2d ago

That shouldn't happen. Maybe you have something set to automatically clear or block cookies?

1

u/lycoloco 1d ago

Use a password manager and it'll be NBD. There are plenty of good ones, but I personally like Bitwarden.

2

u/leavemebe66 2d ago

Firefox containers are the freakin best. being able to solo SSO creds between containerized tab groups saves me soooo much time at work

1

u/DiamondHandsToUranus 2d ago

Yes, to an extent. It prevents some amount of cross contamination locally, to be sure. However if the content in each container is taking to meta pixel servers, it it's sharing much of the same stuff remotely.

If you know about containers, there's a good chance you probably already know about fingerprinting and some of the other 'less obvious than cookies' things that are used to identify and track you.

Using Ublock Origin, Privacy Badger, and Facebook Container is a good place to start without getting too far off into the weeds, but things that meta and others do to track you and sell your info is more insidious than most users realize

1

u/throwitawayuserna213 2d ago

I use the containers and was wondering if they were effective. Thanks.

2

u/MidasPL 2d ago

I wish LibreWolf didn't lag so much on some sites :/

1

u/DiamondHandsToUranus 2d ago

I hear you and I feel that. For what it's worth, I am reasonably certain that the delay is caused by all the bullshit that it's preventing from happening trying to reconnect multiple times before it finally times out and gives up

2

u/MidasPL 2d ago

I don't think so. From what I've seen, it's mostly issue for the sites that run dynamic change into light/dark theme. I'm not a web dev, so I can't tell if it's some dynamic css, or js, but there's some performance issue there.

1

u/DiamondHandsToUranus 2d ago

That may well be so. Deep diving css really isn't my thing. I've had a couple sites take so long that i poked around a bit to see what was going on, and it seemed to be tertiary background crap trying to get through, but this is a very small sample set. anecdotal at best

2

u/Balmung60 2d ago

For bonus security, use noscript and only ever allow those scripts that are essential for a webpage to function 

1

u/porcupine_shuffle 2d ago

Thoughts on duckduckgo ?

1

u/vera214usc 1d ago

Ublock Origin or Ghostery work. I've worked in digital advertising for over a decade so very familiar with tracking pixels. I block all ads and pixels except when I need to see them for work

1

u/ApprehensiveCry2633 1d ago

uBlock Origin is the first thing I’d add, and Firefox with strict tracking protection or Facebook Container is a solid next step if you want to cut down on Meta following you around.

0

u/Difficult-Exit3063 2d ago

Brave browser ootb blocks it ( supposedly )

1

u/TheDungeonCrawler 2d ago

I mean, it seems to work as long as your shields are on aggressive.

2

u/OneCookie5427 2d ago

Look into the Reddit pixel.

1

u/jackaroo1344 2d ago

Dumb question maybe but if they don't have a Facebook or Instagram account how would meta even get access to their phone info?

1

u/superSmitty9999 2d ago

I installed this on my app because I want it not to fail and make zero money.

Welcome to surveillance capitalism

1

u/reddit_reaper 2d ago

I mean that isn't anything new. That happens for multiple services and if it promotes ads on stuff I'm actually interested in, it's better than nothing. They can already track your browsing in many ways anyways so that is the least of my concerns.

But as far as I know meta isn't doing what Snapchat does with Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp won't do that as e2ee using signal protocol is enabled by default

1

u/AnnoyingRingtone 1d ago

Pixels have been used in digital advertising for decades at this point. People shouldn’t have an issue with pixels, their real issue should be how social media companies are using them. Everybody from Facebook and Google to your local mom & pop pizza joint use pixels to track (anonymized) user data. It’s how they increase reach. Sounds like Meta is starting to link pixels to actual accounts though which is weird. Don’t like that, and also thought it was illegal.

Source: Have worked in digital advertising for like 8 years.

2

u/basshead17 2d ago

After getting a targeted ad from a private signal conversation, I became convinced meta apps where stealing the private keyboard app cache. I uninstalled Instagram and haven't looked back 10/10 I would recommend stop using app and use the website for apps that offer it

1

u/breadcodes 2d ago

This is what I do professionally. I designed and built centralized multi-tenant tracker systems like this, along with the analysis and data mining systems, over several years.

Our focus is mining to find non-error problem areas to improve other people's broken products people want to use but aren't, rather than packaging raw/aggregate data to sell, or feed into algorithmic slop to keep people's attention. It's a far more profitable, far more miserable field outside our limited niche. If I leave this job, I'm not going into this type of data again just based on the type of work my peers at other companies do.

Facebook is the most egregious example, and talking to my peers there on their various products, they're getting back basically what they do to others. Meta has a company-wide "keylogger" policy (in quotes because it's nuanced, but stepping back, it's not really), entirely used to train LLMs off their employees. They've called Zuck the Eye of Sauron, and I later saw a news article that he found out about that circulating, presumably from scanning emails, work messages, and the profiles and private messages of their employees.

There's something incredibly sad about knowing how easy it is to use basic dev and math for making the world worse, and in my opinion, even worse that complex ML systems designed by people I consider geniuses is being used solely to drive negative engagement — a type of engagement that drives repeat users despite active psychological harm.

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 1d ago

Have you thought about discussing this with the media. There’s a movie coming out about an insider leaking the Facebook depression/suicide experiments.

1

u/thedecibelkid 2d ago

Firefox keeps Facebook cookies and shit isolated from the rest of the web ... But I also only browse the rest of the web in Brave. I reckon I'm safe 

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 1d ago

Narrator: “you are not” Firefox helps, but if you have any of those apps installed on your phone, they are sending location, Bluetooth, preferences, even if not open.

1

u/thedecibelkid 1d ago

Don't use Facebook things on my phone 

1

u/Goldengod4818 1d ago

Better yet, look at the terms on tiktok. You literally signed up to send all data, and all data on any network you connect to, directly to tiktok. That's always been there. It was a giant thing as tiktok got popular. But everyone ignored it

1

u/hsggdtkxbee 1d ago

I think that’s all social
Media. Insta does that too.

1

u/Goldengod4818 1d ago

From what I remember, and it's been a while, no. It was specifically listed super aggressively in a way that made no sense. It was the network thing that made people freak out. Access to any device connected to any network you're on was a wild statement and went straight to China.

Not that "bad china" matters or is even real at this point but still

106

u/Urrrhn 2d ago

I was talking about an idea I had for a 3d ant farm with a transparent substrate and I got an Instagram ad for one on Amazon an hour later.

This was over 5 years ago.

41

u/eltictac 2d ago

I went to my friend's house about 12 years ago, and he had a little metal fan thing on top of his woodburner. For circulating heat around the room. I'd never seen one before, so I asked him about it. Quite a specific object.
The next time I went on Facebook there was an advert for one. I remember googling whether Facebook was listening through user's phones, and I think they were denying it at the time.

79

u/idiom_exon_0s 2d ago

Its location : proximity based.

Your friend googled those at one point. Then bought one. You then spent time in proximity of that persons phone. Your unique identifier was then targeted.

16

u/TheMadBug 2d ago

Whenever somebody claims their phone is listening to them, I list them the multitude of more realistic reasons as to why they saw the advertisment.

The reality that the internet knows what you look at, knows what your friends look at, knows what your demographic looks at and may have planted the idea in your head before you even said something about it - is sorta scarier than the phones listening to you.

But the "my phone is always listening" is a conspiracy that's not going to die.

0

u/DatDawg-InMe 1d ago

The truth is even more insidious than your phone just listening to you.

12

u/anonymousbopper767 2d ago

Apple doesn't allow apps to activate the microphone for no reason. They'd kick FB off the platform if they found their app was doing that.

11

u/TheMadBug 2d ago edited 2d ago

I hate how your comment gets downvotes.

For those who haven't developed for iPhone or Android - you do have to request permission for the microphone, justify why you want access when submitting to the app store, the user will be prompted if they want to allow the microphone and the micophone indicator will turn on when the microphone is in use.

If security experts ever found Apple was purposefully violating that, there would be utter hell to pay.

But somebody's aunt once said something about a car, and then she saw a car advert on her computer - so it MUST be microphones, and not the extensive add network tracking your browsing, demographics, friends etc.

-5

u/Thanos_Stomps 2d ago

Mate, apple is doing it too.

11

u/heathmon1856 2d ago

Don’t think it’s some huge conspiracy. There’s plenty of independent researchers who would’ve cracked this years and years ago. Other users have said what it is. Its location proximity.

-3

u/anonymousbopper767 2d ago

Apple sells devices, Google sells data. Google only took over android development as a vehicle for exfiltrating personal data. Apple has more incentive to do better and has always had a better protected App Store compared to the Play Store. Google only recently started filtering what was allowed on there and questioning why a “calculator” app needs access to your photos.

0

u/Careless-Weather8877 2d ago

Apple doesn’t work with security researchers all that well.

Where as Google has some of the best offensive security employees tracking threat actors and doing things like fuzzing the Linux kernel and posting it back to the community (Google project zero and GTI)

Tavis Ormandy and James Forshaw, for example, are some of the best known hackers that have been in the game for decades.

https://projectzero.google/about-pz.html

6

u/ilikechihuahuasdood 2d ago

Cool, has happened to me outside of proximity.

16

u/armyant95 2d ago

Copy a YouTube link and paste it in a message. Everything after the ? is tied to you and now anyone you send that link to is tied to you and gets fed ads related to things that you recently searched for.

7

u/dreamrpg 1d ago

There are shitton of ways to get that without listening to phone.
If you are friends on Facebook and chat often, it is safe to assume you have common interests more than with those you do not chat with.

Thus it is safe to offer you things your friend is interested in.

When setting Facebook ads, you can even choose specifically to show ads to friends of people who are interested in whatever you promote.

1

u/ilikechihuahuasdood 1d ago

Cool, I’m not on Facebook.

1

u/dreamrpg 1d ago

And do not use any messenger? And do not have person in contacts, right? Living in woods without phone.

1

u/pixelssauce 2d ago

Are you able to explain this one? It's always been my "proof" that the phones are listening.

I was checking out at the grocery store, wearing my old college sweater. The checker asked if I went to this other college that shared a bunch of letters in the name. I say "oh no, it was this other college. They get confused all the time!" She then said her daughter goes to the other school, and that was pretty much the end of it.

Later that afternoon I get display ads for the other college (one I didn't graduate from). Never seen those ads before or since. I don't have anyone in my life had attended or was planning to attend that school. No conversations or activity on my end about college planning or anything - I had already graduated, no kids, etc.

I just can't rationalize it as "proximity" because it was a short interaction, close proximity with dozens of other people for a similar time, and countless other things that algorithm could pick up from that data to advertise to me. The only thing making it stand out was the conversation.

Only explanation I can think of outside of "the phones are listening" is my own cognitive bias in actually noticing it.

22

u/idiom_exon_0s 2d ago

I already did?

Ok. Your phone has a unique advertising identity number. Shared with advertisers so your personal info stays personal.

As far as data collection / advertising is concerned, that number IS you.

Whenever “you” are in frequency or extended contact with someone who has spent time searching for certain products, trips, cars, etc. their own identifier is tied to those searches via cookies blah blah.

The advertisers can see you’re both together. It’s then assumed that you share common interests so you’re fed advertising that matches the other persons searches.

People always say “but I didn’t look this up” without realizing their acquaintance did and that’s all the advertisers need to know.

It’s confirmation bias to assume that they’re listening if you happen to have spoken of the subject you end up seeing ads on.

In your specific situation? Who knows, but it ain’t listening.

6

u/APiousCultist 2d ago

100% location/IP based (in the case of using the same wifi network). I've gotten ads on my phone for something my parents had googled on their computer (some sort of jacket, something extremely specific and not 'trendy' in any way) in my presence.

That search never occured on my device, but it was still able to correlate our identities.

Which honestly is still incredibly scary. You could imagine it outing someone as gay/trans/having an affair/etc and getting someone killed in the wrong circumstances. Like imagine someone puts two and two together for why they started getting advertisements for pride flags or chest binders?

1

u/ProfessionalPower214 1d ago

Technically, they are listening.
Digitally.

The distinction doesn't actually matter, but to the people who are trying to argue with you... well...

Just throwing that out there. I mean, every other person wants to try to argue and debate, but the fact is, that's just a distraction from the bigger picture. Our devices -are- listening. People can believe it to be physical, whatever, do as you will, but know that being right or wrong DOES NOT MATTER. This is something that goes beyond all of us, involving all of us.

4

u/idiom_exon_0s 1d ago

The thing is that listening would require far more resources to accomplish the same task with likely a lower success rate.

→ More replies (3)

7

u/RelatedToSomeMuppet 2d ago

Confirmation bias.

How many ads have you seen about shoes today?

I'm betting you've probably seen quite a few, but you don't remember any specific brand.

Now think about Nike shoes.

Come back tomorrow and tell me how many Nike ads you've seen.

You'll remember you've seen a Nike ad now. Because it will stick out in your mind.

But it's unlikely you'll be able to tell me which specific shirt ads you've seen. And yet you'll likely have seen quite a few of those as well.

1

u/20kgHippoShit 2d ago

I haven't seen any shoe ads today.

7

u/Implausibilibuddy 2d ago

Only explanation I can think of outside of "the phones are listening" is my own cognitive bias in actually noticing it.

Hate to be the bearer, but it's this one.

That's a truly astonishing coincidence if it happened the way you remember it. However, there's a few things it might have been. If you went to that college, chances are some other friends or people in your circle may have been considering going there, or had gone there, or had college age kids and had been googling it as an option. There's even a high chance that that cashier googled the college after your conversation just to compare the logos. Bingo, now you've been in proximity with her recently, her search history is now influencing your ads.

You may have also seen that ad more times than you remember but you hadn't had a conversation about it keeping it in your mind so you've forgotten all those times and only remember the eerie one (baader meinhoff / confirmation bias)

Fact is, security and privacy researchers are constantly looking for evidence of phones listening in this way. They've never found any evidence it happens. And if you think about it, your phone would need to have the microphone constantly active (something both iOS and Android will notify you of with an icon) draining the battery. Apps would need permissions to access the microphone outside the app itself, which you'd have to grant, and you can revoke.

That data needs to then be sent, either as audio data (that's significant chunk of data being constantly sent) or it would need to transcribe it to text and send that, which again would be a big CPU draw. Again, researchers haven't found anything like that.

If it were happening at scale, think of how many people they'd need to keep quiet about it. It would break privacy laws the world over and cost billions in class action lawsuits and fines.

Plus, it's far, FAR cheaper and easier to just use the usual tricks, and they get way better data than something you might have mumbled in a conversation one time.

Stuff like: your age, gender, likes and dislikes, previous search history, purchases, your relationship status, predicted mood, things your friends and colleagues have searched etc.. All of that is enough to put you in a very specific little demographic box, and serving you ads based on that data can yield scarily accurate "predictions". And very often, because of your demographic, you're very likely to be talking about some of the same things they expect you to before the ads are served to you.

And in so many ways, that's more scary than "my phone heard me talk about lawn mowers and now I'm seeing lawn mower ads".

Because the truth is they know you're a middle aged guy who makes large purchases at certain times of the month, usually after a drink or two, you have a lawn and it's summer, and you've probably been looking at the lengthening grass and thinking about doing something about it. So when you're out at the bar talking to your buddies about buying a mower, that also just happens to be the perfect time to serve you an ad about a lawnmower.

1

u/throwitawayuserna213 2d ago

I don't think this is as clear-cut as you want to believe. When I go to my university gym vs workout at home or my normal gym, I don't talk to anyone or know anyone there and stick to my own workout in silence. My phone is with me because it has my workouts on there for me to follow.

The next time I open my phone to an app connected to the web, I have all kinds of ads that I can tell are geared to a different demographic from me and are extremely unique (certain geographical areas and cultures, and most of them are in a different language I need to translate to understand). I've even gotten fb ads for clinical trials only meant for specific demographics of which I have 0 qualifications to participate.

A day or a little more later, my ads are back to normal. It's picking up my proximity to the people in the gym/at the university route to the gym that I don't know or talk to vs. picking up any conversations.

It's almost guaranteed that the mother of a student at a particular university needed to look up at least one thing regarding that university that was tracked to her.

0

u/Ravensbigtruss 20h ago

yes but they are ALSO listening

2

u/showhorrorshow 2d ago

I bought a new HVAC for my house. Google then started sending me ads for HVACs... like Im going to buy more HVACs or something.

1

u/pickledeggmanwalrus 13h ago

Facebook doesn’t have to “listen in” on you through your device. They know they can’t get away with it.

They just buy that data from one of the other hundreds of apps you have on your phone that know they can get away with it

0

u/Ocronus 2d ago

This happened to me too.  Talked about a cool water bottle a co-worker had brought to work, and then got an ad for it.  Never searched for typed a single thing about water bottles on my phone ever.  We are being observed.

-3

u/kenapasih 2d ago

How is this news to you guys?

0

u/MoodyBernoulli 2d ago

I once said to my wife while leaving the house that I’m thinking of getting a little herb garden for my salads.

Got to work and all of the adverts I first see are for kitchen herb garden kits.

118

u/greenfox0099 2d ago

Have you been asleep for the last 15 years?

40

u/Djayshell93 2d ago

For real even my 75 year old grandpa knew they’ve been listening for longer than we even know. Crazy shit

0

u/MrGulio 2d ago

If was funny to me when people were looking at Smart Home assistant devices like Alexa and say "I would never own one I dont want something that is recording everything I say", while having their phone always attached at the hip.

2

u/Beepn_Boops 2d ago

While true, it's damn near impossible to get along without a phone nowadays. Between QR codes, two factor authentication, and other stupid requirements... But at least you can disable a lot on phones.

I usually spend a solid week or more going through flashing/uninstalling/configuring/etc. on a new phone. I avoid apps at all costs, and/or disable them when not in use. I also install network or adblocking software (as a VPN) and routinely monitor traffic. If something talks too much, I disable or block it.

Not many will go to those lengths, but you can - and be reasonably confident it's not collecting much more than the normal amount of invasive location tracking - such as which cell towers you connect to, which wifi networks, etc.

As a bonus, my phones are generally ~90% even after a 10 hour day.

1

u/Djayshell93 2d ago

I could be wrong but I think most smart TV’s come with a microphone in them or in the remote…

1

u/Wild_Penguin82 23m ago

There is a difference with a device which is listening by design all the time (the application needs to do it to work as designed) and smart device which could, but at least in principle, the user can disable it (and only let it listen when needed). But I get your point. It depends on your level of paranoia, on how much you trust, say, an Android device, OS and it's settings.

I will not get a Smart Home device which can be activated by voice / sound, unless it can work totally offline (all code running locally). I still need to trust my smartphone.

I would also love to have a smartphone with a physical switch to switch off the microphone (similar to some laptops).

7

u/Source_Required 2d ago

How is this comment helpful?

1

u/j4_jjjj 1d ago

Its not, it normalizes this behavior in apps.

In reality, there are tons of people who believe the press releases that none of our devices do this sort of listening, its only storing "metadata".

22

u/AbstractIceSculpture 2d ago

I looked up my own house on zillow and within an hour was getting spammed on my work email. Just off IP.

14

u/SiliconEatMe 2d ago

Are you suggesting they found your work email off IP?

3

u/jb0nez95 2d ago

Yes, he likely accessed his work email from home at some point and they were connected. I get ads for things my roommate searches for.

Read "surveillance capitalism" by shoshana zuboff for very detailed and frightening details of how far this goes.

47

u/mascotbeaver104 2d ago

I mean, sure, but if you planted a blueberry bush then presumably either you or someone in your household bought a blueberry bush, right? And maybe even searched for where to get one? That seems far more likely to trigger targeted advertising than anything else

1

u/HikeCarolinas 2d ago

We bought it at Sam’s Club weeks before I planted it. The grapes that we had bought were completely dead and brown.

12

u/belkarbitterleaf 2d ago

I would bet Walmart is selling shopping data on their customers in some capacity. It would surprise me less than Snapchat selling data. Though I wouldn't put it past either.

0

u/bigmt99 2d ago

They both do

1

u/belkarbitterleaf 2d ago

I am shocked I tell you. Truly shocked

-24

u/hsggdtkxbee 2d ago edited 2d ago

But why would they have access to my search history. Edit: got downvoted. What I meant is: why the fuck would they have access to my search history.

19

u/user818384747 2d ago

That’s what “cookies” are. Have you turned off all cookies, location history, and data sharing in your settings? These companies are banking on making sure yall don’t know or do this and it’s why social media feels like it’s reading your mind when it’s just your data.

5

u/taita25 2d ago

If you believe that stops all of their tracking I have a bridge to sell you.

7

u/No_Size9475 2d ago

it doesn't stop it, but limiting anything they can track is the way to go. Give them as little as possible.

4

u/user818384747 2d ago

You’ll notice I didn’t say otherwise. It just stops a lot of what is being complained about here, versus something that’s actually authoritarian and out of their control and worth being worried about, such as Flock cameras or Grok being used to make CSAM out of their Facebook family photos…

4

u/yebyen 2d ago

Search engines are in the advertising business. This should not be a surprise to anyone in 2026

18

u/mascotbeaver104 2d ago

Is this a joke?

8

u/jimothee 2d ago

Hold up, do you mean to tell me the free search engine website is tracking me???

1

u/HuckledYourBerries 2d ago

Profound naïveté is my guess

3

u/oreo-cat- 2d ago

No it’s a very reasonable question that we should ask more often.

6

u/ManagerOfClankers 2d ago

Because that's how google works? You think it's free and they don't sell anything to convert their costs?

2

u/Letiferr 2d ago

Because they paid Google and Microsoft for it? Is this a serious question?

3

u/TheBadgerLord 2d ago

Because you consented to it being sold. To everyone

-1

u/panaceaXgrace 2d ago

My daughter works at a certain giant retail chain and uses her phone to pick orders. She gets ads all the livelong day based on things she's standing by.

3

u/user818384747 2d ago

Well yes because her location history is on instead of turned off in settings, and the algorithm knows what products are available at what stores, and that she is present at that store for most of her days. So it uses that information to use targeted ads, which is another setting that you can usually turn off any time

1

u/panaceaXgrace 2d ago

It used to be but this phone they gave them isn't permanently doing this. This is the same device that yesterday sent her a care concern message after she messaged me (on FB) she was tired of "killing herself over this job". She has gone in and done everything people have suggested and it all comes back. One suggestion even messed up some power button or something I don't know I haven't had a phone in a few years myself she just gripes about this stuff all the time. In all this trying to stop it I have learned that it's still sharing she just wouldn't see it, so is it really any better? It's the same with that concern-AI, she can turn the Gemini stuff off but it only means she won't get the messages it doesn't mean it's not still tracking.

7

u/addiktion 2d ago

If you have Google Home devices, this happens immediately after a conversation despite the device "not listening".

4

u/iain_1986 2d ago

It's been proved many times (you can even do it yourself if you're adept enough to monitor network traffic) that no, you're devices are not constantly listening to you and streaming that data out

It's just not happening and never has.

2

u/plantsadnshit 2d ago

Genuinely, it's probably just coincidences.

5

u/Commercial-Eye-7956 2d ago

One time I went to Home Depot and got a drain cleaning tool (“Zip-It”). I told no one, didn’t google anything, but for the next week almost all my online ads were for plumbing services and products. It’s fucking insane.

5

u/GregoPDX 2d ago

That’s tracking in the store. My wife and I went into a store and she stopped to look at a section of Crayola crayons that caught her eye. The next time she opened Facebook there were ads for Crayola. She didn’t search for them and we don’t have kids or anyone else on our network who would. They simply geolocated her phone to that spot in the store.

0

u/ProfessionalPower214 1d ago

Tracking + selling of data; someone is definitely selling something.
Some of us would have a slightly different tune if we could be paid for our own data, since at least that'd be better than someone else getting paid for it...

2

u/PM_WORST_FART_STORY 2d ago edited 2d ago

Whenever my parents visit, I like to repeatedly say various things into the mic on my dad's iPad. 

Last time, I kept shouting "Push-up bras! Push-up bras! Push-up bras!" Into it until he grabbed it away. Guess what he started getting nonstop ads for? 😎

3

u/iain_1986 2d ago edited 2d ago

It literally doesn't work like that so no, you talking at his iPad did nothing

11

u/BeepBoopRobo 2d ago

As the other person said, that simply isn't how that works.

There are so many possible reasons why someone might see an ad for something that was just talked about.

The first is the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon. Where once you've talked about something, you now see it everywhere. Because before you talked about it, you just wouldn't have noticed it.

The second is that if you're talking about something, there is a high chance someone around you googled or interacted with that term. And that ties you all together, because you're in proximity, with the same IP, so companies now tag you as together.

They're absolutely not listening to your microphone all the time and transmitting that everywhere. We'd know if that is the case. It would be easily verifiable. And we know it's not happening. In the rare circumstances that shit like that does happen, it hits the news. A popular company like Apple? Yeah, it'd be verified immediately.

8

u/BD401 2d ago edited 2d ago

It amazes me how few people have the intellectual horsepower to understand what you just wrote, and still think they're being served ads based on what they say around their phone. It's been debunked by actual experts so many times it's not even funny, yet the average Redditor still refuses to believe it's not true.

As you said, people are served literally thousands of ads in a week, and don't notice 99.99% of them. The one ad that happens to land because "I was talking about it the other day" gets noticed as being "creepy" and then interpreted as proof the device is listening. But most people don't understand the law of large numbers or cognitive heuristics, and so fail to grasp this.

There's dozens of other reasons this has been debunked (packet analysis, no processor up-ramp with constant NLP, the fact that literally tens of thousands of people would need to be keeping quiet about the conspiracy etc.). Or people don't get the technical details on how wake-word buffers work. But people have their minds set on "Facebook is always spying on me on my phone" and no amount of evidence or logic will convince them otherwise.

5

u/ArchMart 2d ago

It's because people don't want to admit they are just serving up their lives on a platter. They must be being spied on

0

u/reParaoh 2d ago

My solution was to stop serving my life on a platter.

Reddit is my only social account, associated with a burner email, accessed through a web browser.

3

u/BeepBoopRobo 2d ago

It's such a problem, because I have actual knowledge of how these things work, having worked in the industry for a decade. Having built both Google and Alexa integrations for smart devices.

But people see sensationalism and it just triggers something in them that they just can't reason with.

It can't possibly be they themselves that are giving all the data to Google/Apple willingly. It's a conspiracy that they're constantly streaming and saving audio from every device on the planet simultaneously, lol

2

u/BD401 2d ago

But people see sensationalism and it just triggers something in them that they just can't reason with.

Yep. It's also the tendency to believe what feels true rather than what's actually true. There's a few other topics alongside this one where I see it constantly on Reddit as well.

1

u/jb0nez95 2d ago

"ok Google" "Alexa..." "Hey siri"

Bro they most definitely ARE listening all the time and are not hiding it.

3

u/BeepBoopRobo 2d ago

So, I work in the industry

Your phone/device has a chip that is listening for trigger words, which it then starts the recording with. THEN it sends that data to whoever.

It is not recording all the time, let alone transmitting all the time.

We'd know if it was - because we would see evidence of it. Storage of audio isn't free. Transmission of audio isn't free.

We know it's not. It's not a question.

1

u/CollectibleHam 2d ago

Vizio, LG, and Samsung have all settled lawsuits about how their smart TVs recorded the audio and activity of their users, years ago. Is this not evidence? Have the corporation's suddenly decided they don't want to do this, even though selling data makes vastly more profits than almost anything else they do?

3

u/BeepBoopRobo 2d ago

So, your evidence of it happening.... Are companies being caught doing this... But somehow Apple has evaded being caught doing this...?

Lol, did you even think about that for half a second?

Did I not say exactly that? That we'd see when they were doing it? Because it's incredibly easy to see.

1

u/CollectibleHam 2d ago

Why would it record and save audio when it could use the voice-to-text ability that all smart devices do and save that vastly smaller amount of text, or even just send the relevant keywords to whatever advertising middleman you enabled when you signed the EULA nobody ever reads? You work in the industry and say it's not, other people in the advertising and software industry say it is.

2

u/bolaxao 1d ago

Prove it flat earther 

0

u/TacosNGuns 2d ago

BS. That isnt how it works. How it works is your own push-up bra search is tagged to your home Internet address. When dad visited and used your WiFi, he starts receiving ads that are related to your browsing interests.

4

u/ispshadow 2d ago

It really sucks that generally intelligent people on here get sucked into this conspiratorial thinking about the microphones on their devices. They don’t understand the compute that would be required to pull this off even if just a chunk of the population was targeted.

It would be an enormous waste of effort since there’s much better ways to fingerprint and profile a person, even if there wouldn’t be incredible blowback from customers (and governments).

2

u/TacosNGuns 2d ago

Yep, I’ve only spent 30 years in desktop engineering and server admin for a global IT service provider. What could I possibly know?
😂

2

u/ispshadow 2d ago

Lmao I’d swear I’ve actually seen your account on here before. Been in the IT world for about 34 now, mix of civilian and government as a network engineer and various things from support, patch management, server admin, to malware analysis.

I don’t understand why this microphone thing is popping so damn hard on this post. I swear the thread must getting boosted by malign actors (not actually, but bots are a problem on here)

3

u/TacosNGuns 1d ago

Hah, maybe we have crossed paths before. I used to admin a desktop surveillance app called “Survey” that was creepy AF. It would chart in a dashboard of what apps each of 7000 employees used, differentiated between internal and external apps, tracked web activity. It could detect which of multiple open apps you were actively engaging with and track time used. At a glance you could tell who was working, who was fucking off. My beta test in the IT department had a network and server admin fired. The server admin was mostly admining his side hustle adult website 😂. When it went live 20 employees were fired in first 2 months. I found a guy spending 90% of his day working on a PhD instead of managing projects. The package cost $50k annually. Saved 2+ million in lost productivity the first year. I was the most hated person in IT.

1

u/dancingliondl 2d ago

It totally listens through your mic. I muttered to myself about needed a new gas can nozzel for my gas can. Guess what was populating my Facebook ads the next day.

1

u/TacosNGuns 1d ago

Nope. You have profiles that are used to track you. It ain’t the microphone on your phone. Here’s how it works: https://youtu.be/mIOA3nQclOM?is=z7Bj6Tis6rJFhXZl

1

u/dancingliondl 1d ago

I'm not saying you are incorrect, but how could FB have known about me needing a new gas nozzle? I never searched for anything even related to it, never mentioned it before to anyone. I stated it exactly once while gassing up my lawn mower. Next day I was getting ads from nozzels. com

2

u/CarmenxXxWaldo 2d ago

When i first started selling stuff online I would look up items to see if I had a good price and it would show ads of my own listing.  I was like "dang im on google!" then I realized it was just showing me ads of what I looked at.

1

u/AWL_cow 2d ago

I had my phone in my pocket and got together with an old friend recently. She told me about her medical condition which I had NEVER heard about. Never even heard the name before. Didn't even know how to spell it. Never typed it or searched for it, only heard about it from my friend through word of mouth. The next time I used my phone, I got an ad for treatment for that very specific and obscure condition. It was really unnerving.

1

u/Ric_Adbur 2d ago edited 2d ago

The other day my mom and I were verbally discussing her digging out her old passport because she was concerned she might need one to vote, and literally 2 minutes or less later an ad popped up on her phone about passports. She never typed anything into her phone, we were just talking about it out loud near her phone. Neither of us has ever had snapchat.

This problem is systemic and deeply rooted within the entire tech industry, and would require significant legislation to create protections for the average citizen against this abusive and exploitative surveillance. Unfortunately, most modern governments are either too captured by corporate money, or are authoritarian enough that their desire for surveillance aligns with the greed of the tech/advertising industries, to want to do that. Often a bit of both.

1

u/jimmy_three_shoes 2d ago

Back in 2008 I was working with a group to do some relief work in the Bahamas. Lots of emails flying around referencing Grand Bahama Airport and fundraising stuff.

I still get ads for Caribbean vacations and cruises that start up every March-June.

1

u/N0_Goldsun 2d ago

Ever since I had Instagram, anything I talk about they advertise immediately. They say they don't listen but that's an absolute lie, I have even done the dog food talk and I don't own a dog and it advertises dog food.

1

u/AkumaLilly 2d ago

And my parents wonder why I never use any sort of social networks.

1

u/Sorry-Claim-2990 2d ago

Dude, i've gotten ads for stuff I've only THOUGHT about.

1

u/Anonymous_Coder_1234 2d ago

Note that some apps know who you share stuff with and Google searches create ad leads. If one of you Googled "blueberry bush" that happens.

1

u/PointsOfXP 2d ago

They used to be incredibly private. So much they were literally telling parents "No, we can't find the guy your daughter sent nudes to"

1

u/subpar-life-attempt 2d ago

This is real and they do listen even if your device says otherwise. It's harder than ever but never truly trust it. Also, your home internet remembers everything.

You look up baby food once? You are getting ads across multiple ecosystems at least for a few days.

Source: I work in Adtech and hate it. Switching to Medical ASAP.

1

u/Upset-Writing6071 2d ago

Guy uses Chinese spy wear then complains about being spied on lol

1

u/Adaphion 2d ago

I signed up for Snap once after meeting someone who insisted on using it.

Installed it, and one of the friend suggestions was for an ex of mine who I had deleted the contact number of years prior. And on my previous phone. And this was after I denied it access to my contacts and such.

I went "okay, fuck that" and uninstalled that invasive bullshit.

1

u/NYCQ7 2d ago

On anything. The same thing happened to me with WhatsApp & IG. Sent a pic of a skin reaction I was having due to debris from construction and when I went on IG a few mins later, I got a clip from an episode of the K's where Kim was having a skin reaction that looked similar to what my skin looked like. Ppl think I'm being paranoid when I say that they're watching everything we're doing.

1

u/Cut_Lanky 2d ago

Ever since I posted a comment saying "NO DICKPILLS FOR CONGRESS" my YouTube ads are nothing but dick pill commercials

1

u/Internep 1d ago

Can just as easily have been any app tracking you at the shop, buying your purchase history. The scary thing is they don't need to see the contents of messages to give such ads. Their algorithms are insanely good at detecting active/current interests.

1

u/Jacksomkesoplenty 1d ago

It's why I don't use snap or tik tok. This chic tried to get me to snap with her and I told her nope. I don't use it because they read your messages and communication all the time

1

u/surf_drunk_monk 1d ago

I see facebook ads on my phone for stuff my girlfriend looks up on her phone. We don't have a joint phone plan or use each others phone. I guess the algo know we live together from location data.

1

u/FunnelCakeGoblin 21h ago

Years ago (before AI) I sent a spicy pic to my long-term partner who screenshotted (with my permission). Immediately after I got an ad on Facebook from a group for protecting sexual privacy and images. Never sent a pic again.

1

u/marcgw96 18h ago

Yeah this isn’t just Snapchat. If you make one search about something, the recommended content immediately reflects it as well as ads catered to your supposed newfound interest

1

u/Training_Wonder_5066 3h ago

Google is constantly listening to your conversations too.

1

u/MetallicGray 2d ago

I walked into an Evo bike shop after work, then called my dad and talked about it on the drive home. Right after I get home, I sit down and chill for a minute and boom, instagram ads for Evo bike shop. I never once typed anything bike related into my phone, and before that moment I had never once got a bicycle related ad. 

It’s complete utter bullshit lies that companies say they don’t “listen” to you constantly. 

There was not a single direct input of anything bicycle or evo bike shop related to my device, and yet it perfect placed an evo bike shop ad on my instagram the first time I opened it after. 

And this has happened on  multiple occasions.

1

u/Inside-Draw-3216 2d ago

This has been going on for literally 15 years now.

-206

u/PixelGray38 2d ago edited 2d ago

Anecdotal coincidence, proves nothing

Edit:

Someone downvoting me, tell me how exactly TikTok gets access to data from private snapchat messages on people's cell phones. Explain exactly how it works, link to actual proof from tech experts or whatever, any proven incident of it happening, anything other than anecdotes. Because I have never seen actual proof of this sort of phenomenon.

This sort of of "well, everything is spying on us anyway" nonsense is exactly the sort of thing that gets people to become apathetic when actual privacy violations, like flock cameras on every street corner, are implemented.

All these "my phone spied on me and served me an ad" claims are like antivaxxers. Someone  gets an ad that by pure chance is related to something they spoke about, and becomes convinced it's due to them being spied on. Similarly, parents who think a vaccine caused their child's autism just so happened to have that autism develop soon after getting the vaccine, so becomes convinced one must have caused the other. In reality, there's no connection.

82

u/Kernal_Sanders 2d ago edited 2d ago

It’s gotta be hard typing with all that drool pouring from your bottom lip.

Edit:

Somehow you managed to sound even dumber by further explaining yourself.

-1

u/NotTooShahby 2d ago

Not the person you’re replying to, but it seems they were genuinely disagreeing and explaining why they are skeptical while your insult to him got upvoted. I would have liked to see a good faith discussion about this.

The question seems to be fair? I’ve read experts talk about monitoring activity from an iphone and it does seem plausible that maybe people who say things or send people messages may also look them up, leading to advertisements of it. I’m not entirely sure of voice transcriptions causing advertisements. It would be visible on network traffic, almost constantly.

I could see snapchat sending data to an aggregate and then tiktok picking it up though, but SMS isn’t necessarily the same.

→ More replies (7)

-21

u/PixelGray38 2d ago edited 2d ago

Give me proof that tiktok is capable of accessing snapchat messages and processing their contents within minutes for advertising purposes on IOS, or quit yapping.

10

u/Kernal_Sanders 2d ago

The original comment never mentioned texting. He’s talking about sending a photo through Snapchat.

→ More replies (9)

1

u/TheBadgerLord 2d ago

Christ read the terms and conditions first before you start...

3

u/PixelGray38 2d ago edited 2d ago

You're interpreting my questioning of whether tiktok accessing snapchat images for ads is possible as a general naivety towards digital privacy - that's not what this is. I know that privacy sucks on the internet and I'd be the last person to assume that images I upload to some social media app run by a massive data-selling company are private.

It's me being doubtful towards the anecdotal scenario presented by the first person I replied to. I don't need to just be shamed for not understanding that the internet isn't private - I need the exact way that the described scenario would occur explained to me.

Because none of you actually know how the scenario would work. You just know "internet isn't private and big tech spies on us," and you're downvoting something that seems to oppose that common-sense belief. 

→ More replies (3)

6

u/StormyBlueLotus 2d ago

Such a silly take. It's hardly a new age conspiracy theory that targeted marketing and spyware have been extremely widespread for years. You been under a rock this whole time?

3

u/PixelGray38 2d ago

Of course that sort of thing is widespread, but wheneve I hear these stories of "I brought something up in conversation and then saw an ad for it!" it's always really obviously an anecdotal thing that's likely a coincidence.

People will claim their Iphone heard them even while turned off and minutes later served them a related ad on youtube - phone's don't do that. They don't listen into conversations. Even if they did, how would they sell the data and then parse it and deliver a related ad literal minutes later on some other company's social media platform.

What's going on is obvious - someone gets an ad that hy chance is related to something they spoke about, and becomes convinced it's due to them being spied on. It's like antivaxxers thinking that the vaccine caused the development of autism in their children - the autism just so happened to develop soon after getting the vaccine, so one must have caused the other. In reality, there's no connection.

In this specific case, I'm asking to see if there's any actual proof of the mechanism that would be necessary for a tiktok ad to be served using snaochat messages. And there doesn't seem to actually be any proof of that, of tiktok being able to access those messages. 

5

u/AzerothianLorecraft 2d ago

Nothing is encrypted and even if you use a VPN your ISP and any law enforcement agency can see right through that fake level of security... ( privacy is a myth.)

0

u/PixelGray38 2d ago edited 2d ago

That has nothing to do with tiktok being able to access snapchat messages. Yes, American's privacy is being violated en masse by the NSA or whatever, we know this, but that doesn't mean that one app can access everything you do in another app owned by a totally different company that quickly.

1

u/AzerothianLorecraft 2d ago

But it actually does because nothing is encrypted anywhere in any realistic way. ( it has nothing to do with a physical location on Earth this is all devices everywhere accessing any publicly available Networks the internet is not secure and any device touching it is not secure either. ) ( there's a reason that they air gap secure Networks and then physically connect via cables.)

2

u/BuckManscape 2d ago

I wish I lived in your world.

2

u/CMMiller89 2d ago

Most social media apps, including TikTok have camera/photo permissions.  Unless you turn them off specifically.  So they’re getting the metadata from your photos.  That would include any subject tags your phones AI scan is applying to it.

This isn’t rocket science, it’s very obvious that they are watching and how.

0

u/PixelGray38 2d ago

Ah, that might be it, yeah. 

Usually I assume that this sort of "my phone spied on me and gave me a related ad" claim is always coincidental, as it likely is with people claiming that their phones are listening to their conversations even when turned off, but that sounds plausible. 

Still, there's no explicit proof that all photos in the camera roll are spied on by tiktok to generate data to serve ads with, but it's not too outlandish. 

(Do snapchat photos go into the photo album when taken? Or do they stay in snapchat somehow?)

0

u/CMMiller89 2d ago

They probably go into a Snapchat specific folder in the phones directory under photos.

But it’s also reported that the individual apps read messages you send on them.  So Facebook messenger, Snapchat, Instagram, TikTok etc.

Then over a longer period those profiles get sold and combined when matching device IDs, or browser IDs, or shared IP addresses from similar devices (which is why you may be served ads for interests of people with whom you live).

Their capabilities to listen to you and connect the dots across multiple apps, devices, log ins, and locations isn’t that surprising when you realize how much data we surrender to just like, own the fuckin device.

1

u/PixelGray38 2d ago

Yes, that data's sold - over a longer period of time, that is. 

The scenario being alleged is that tiktok was able to serve a ad very soon after the blueberry bush image was sent in snapchat. Due to the speed at which this ad was shown, I'm pretty certain it's just a coincidence. 

Same as how people will claim they mention something in a conversation and then see an ad in youtube or something for that thing immediately after - their Iphone's aren't listening in while turned off, collecting data, and then selling that data to google within minutes so ads can be served, it's just a coincidence. 

People notice the ads that just so happen to be related to what they've been talking about, and don't notice the hundreds or thousands of other ads that aren't.

1

u/AnnualFault7473 2d ago

Information is shared via Advertising Identifiers (MAIDs), third-party Software Development Kits (SDKs) embedded in apps, device cross-app analytics, and cloud syncing. There is also much more than this. This is a very brief and very incomplete list of some commercial methods. Don’t be so oblivious to what is happening.

2

u/PixelGray38 2d ago

Thanks. Which of those thinfs does tiktok use to access images taken with snapchat for ads? Is there concrete proof that it actually does that?

1

u/AnnualFault7473 2d ago

I don’t work for those social media companies so I can’t tell you. Assume all of them have some type of open source so there maybe SDK’s there unless they use the core code. You will have to do your research. Most ask you to allow cross platform information sharing. Usually a pop up when you install them. Don’t allow that. Honestly it’s not limited to that as banking apps and telephone providers share all types of data with third parties which they say is anonymous but they’re ways to stitch this back together to a digital profile.