Is your phone listening to you?

A lot of people have had a very creepy experience with their phones. Sometimes, when I talk about something with my friends, then I'll look on TikTok 30 minutes later, and then the same thing will show up. We were talking about this trip before we came, and then my Instagram Reels were just full of New York content for weeks. You say something to your friends, or oh, I want to watch this movie, or I haven't tried this type of food. And then the second you open the app, it shows you exactly that. So it's a bit strange. Is my phone listening to me. It is not. I've been asked about this a million times, and I can guarantee you that your phone is not passively listening to you for advertising purposes. So people have brought this up to you at parties and-- Oh, my whole family thinks it's true.

Ari Paparo is a veteran of the ad industry, a consultant and author. He says that there's no way anyone could process audio from billions of phones. Listening to every conversation around the world and interpreting them and looking for certain words and then matching them to the ads is impossible.

So why does it seem like the phone is listening? First, because advertisers do target you with ads tailored to your interests. But they don't need to listen to what you say. To do that. They can infer or deduce things about you, where you live and your age, and probably what you're interested in based on what websites you went to or what apps you've used. And that whole combination can get pretty precise. And second, because you might live with someone who searched for a product online. I told my wife, man, we got to get a better peeler for our carrots. And then Facebook shows me an ad for a peeler. Right, your wife could have looked for a peeler, and then the ad company couldn't really tell the difference between her and you because you're using the same internet in the same household. That happens a lot. How do we know that the phone is not listening for what we say? I mean, has anyone ever done a test? We did a study with thousands of apps on an Android device and wanted to see as you interact with these apps, are they recording your audio and sending it off?

David Chofness is a professor of computer science at Northeastern University. And yes, he conducted a study. We didn't see any surreptitious recording of information. But these companies are very good at watching everything you're doing online. You got a little apartment here. And what you're doing in your home. Chofness has set up a fake apartment filled with online devices to study how much data they send. We have smart appliances, we have cameras. We have every smart Speaker we can get our hands on. We try to identify, are they sending data to places we're not comfortable with?

Now, the advertisers do not know who you are. They don't have your name or address, but they do know what categories you fit into. Many states require data collection companies to give you your advertising profile on request. Chofness, for example, got a copy of his. This is my famous data report of over 300 pages just filled wall to wall with inferences about me. Wait. Says, do you have an Xbox? Do you have an Xbox? I not have an Xbox. Oh, oops. Although it's not especially accurate. You're extremely likely to go on a cruise. Which is interesting because I never want to go on a cruise.

If you'd like to minimize the data you're feeding advertisers, there are a few steps you can take. You can push your lawmakers to come up with laws that are favorable for consumers, and not just favorable for the businesses that are collecting data from us. Chrome is giving you--

Ari Paparo says your choice of web browser matters too. The Safari browser doesn't allow a lot of this.

That must make advertisers furious. Advertisers are not big fans of Apple and Safari. And you don't think the phone is overhearing you? I'm sure the phone is not overhearing it. And you're equally sure that no one's really going to be convinced when they see this story. I'm positive that no one will believe me.