Smart Phone Listening.

[KevinVarnes]

Sorry, this article does absolutely nothing to convince me that our smart phones are not tapping into the environment around it. Never was this more blatantly obvious than last summer. I was out on the floor talking to another guy about an issue with his car (Prius). I was sitting at a table and had my phone sitting there. During the conversation he mentions the name of some company that rebuilds batteries for his car that I had never heard of. I go to my desk 10-15 minutes later to eat lunch and on my browser is an ad for this very same company that I have never researched nor had any inkling to do so. You can't chalk that up to humans being predictable. I don't use any voice activated apps (that I am aware of anyway), and don't use Siri or any of that other garbage.

No, Your iPhone Isn't Listening to You. Here's What's Really Happening

There are lots of reasons an ad pops up on your phone, but none involve a microphone listening.

www.cnet.com

 

[Chingon1]

I totally believe it, I’ll be so bold as to say that…. There’s been times… when I’m THINKING about something, not even saying a single world about it and I get ads for it. I know im not the only one to experience this before.

I can’t find the article anymore but it’s been said that even our TV’s are watching us while we watch whatever we’re watching. Supposedly this was tested during WW2 and then the tech was mass produced.

 

[Irv]

Whenever I see posts like these, I always wonder why people aren't blocking ads, not only on their phone, but on every device. The modern Internet is completely unusable without ad blocking and targeted advertising is just one small piece of that negative user experience.

 

[KevinVarnes]

I don't know?? I guess I'm not so over encumbered by ads that is bothers me? It isn't like the late 90's where I click on a site and I get 18 pop-up ads. This was just a side bar ad on a site that I was on. The only ads I see on my phone are when I'm trying to watch something on YouTube.

 

[Irv]

The targeted ads are a part of that though. I don't want a dozen spammy ads overlaying the content I want to read and I also don't want a single targeted ad off to the side either. It's all a waste of screen real estate and disrupts content flow and usability, never mind the user tracking.

There is nothing that Internet advertising can sell me on. At best, I might learn about a new type of product, and then I do my own research and find a company that makes a more reliable, durable, and/or reputable version of whatever crap was being peddled in the ad. At this point in the game, we should know what products and companies to trust because they don't need to advertise, and which are total scams like Established Titles and AI-powered toy pets. All the scams and garbage products that make up YouTube ads are a plague to the Internet because content creators aren't benefiting from those. The ad revenue is mostly going to Google.

As far as targeted ad content is concerned, it all becomes moot if I prevent it from showing up on my screen in the first place.

 

[theterminator93]

I've got several dozen YouTube videos published to my channel. I do not monetize any of my videos. Most are unlisted and I share the link to the audience I intend for the video. The public videos I have, even the ones with no copyrighted or claimed content, about half of them YouTube has monetized for their own benefit. Sometimes I get hit with ads on my own unmonetized videos if I go to view comments left for it on my phone!

Thank goodness for Firefox and uBlock.

At one point I was Google Chatting with a buddy about old games we remember from the 90s. Within minutes, he was getting Facebook ads for some of the games we had mentioned in our chat.

 

[XR7-4.6]

I think if Apple, Google et al would just admit that they do this people would be less upset about it. Instead they have their cronies at cnet write articles about “no, no, no, and here’s some technobabble as to why.”

Bullshit! We all know they’re doing it and I don’t even particularly care, I just have had too many “coincidences” in ads pop up where I can’t block them for me to accept the official narrative by these tech oligarchs.

 

[Grog6]

If you want to know for sure: after being idle for a bit, have a conversation about dinner. Discuss 3 restaurants, different types. Give it a few minutes.
When you look at your phone,or google, You'll have ads for them. And coupons, usually.

 

[Irv]

Mobile ad blocking is a little more challenging to set up than desktop, but here are some basics of my device setup to get started. This is compatible with both iOS and unrooted Android. After over a decade of running rooted Android starting with my first Android phone, I'm finally running unrooted for the first time ever and it forced me to read about some different ways of blocking ads from what I'm used to doing.

Private DNS: NextDNS https://nextdns.io/
300K queries per month are included in their free plan, which is well above my typical mobile usage. Their web control panel gives you a lot of configuration options. Their paid plans are affordable too. Setting up ad and malware blocking at the DNS level is the easiest way to filter out junk without having to make changes to your actual device at the operating system/file system level, which is good considering both Apple and Google are essentially anti-ownership now.

Browser: Firefox mobile or any forks that have extension support with uBlock Origin
Extension support is essential to making this work. This is also the custom filter I use to prevent that AI Overview garbage from appearing in Google searches. On mobile though, lately I've started using DuckDuckGo as my default search engine.


google.com##h1:has-text(/^AI Overview$/):upward(7)
google.com##.hdzaWe


Another alternative that I haven't tested is Brave browser for mobile, but it also has a robust ad blocker that has functionality similar to uBlock Origin from what I understand. I have Brave as my teritary browser on my desktop PC and I never really explored what its built-in ad blocker is capable of, but I know it's more capable than what's found in other browsers and it can use blocklists that are compatible with uBO.

YouTube (Android): Revanced https://revanced.app/
I've been using this for years back when it was called YouTube Vanced. It needs to be updated perhaps once a year or so as Google deprecates old versions of the YouTube app preventing video playback, so periodically, I patch a newer version of the app with the Revanced patches and check that all my previous settings are still working. It has a slight learning curve, but it's worth it. I will never use regular YouTube on Android again.

YouTube (iOS)
There are a few options including browser-based as well as alternative apps. I can't say that I'm familiar with all of them or know which ones work the best, but here are some ideas:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Adblock/comments/1gb5091/is_there_a_alternative_to_the_youtube_app_on_ios

Ad block test: https://adblock.turtlecute.org/
Use this test after you have everything configured. Firefox/uBO has documented incompatibilities with this site, but this is my result in Whale, which is a Chromium-based browser with some basic internal ad block filtering, plus DNS-level filtering with NextDNS.



One thing that I no longer use that I did in the past is VPN tunnel ad block software. Apps that do this include Blokada and AdGuard. I've found them to be problematic because they can sometimes cause conflicts elsewhere, like connecting to in-flight Wi-Fi or other networks that require authentication. Also, since the filtering is performed at the device level, those apps may incur a slight performance hit on the device compared to DNS-based filtering.

So to be perfectly honest, I have no idea what it's like to have my phone serve me an ad about something I was discussing out loud with present company. I never see ads in my mobile browser, YouTube, or free apps that are supported by ads served by CDNs that are on common public blocklists.

 

[XR7-4.6]

I use brave for mobile, it works great. It does fight with YouTube playing videos occasionally but you just need to refresh and they work.

I never use the YouTube app, I always use YouTube on the browser.

 

[KevinVarnes]

All great information about ad-blocking. I guess my point wasn't so much about being able to block the ads, but that as much as everyone says that this garbage isn't listening in, it very much is. Repeatedly telling me it isn't and coming up with bogus reasoning on how it isn't and I'm just wrong doesn't help.

 

[Kenz]

I don't know?? I guess I'm not so over encumbered by ads that is bothers me? It isn't like the late 90's where I click on a site and I get 18 pop-up ads.

I agree the internet used to be worse in some ways. Remember the search bars that were borderline viruses?
I have always just run an ad blocker on my browser, and that is good enough.

The targeted advertising isn't so bad in some ways. If am going to hear or watch an ad I would rather it's something I am interested in or actually considering buying

I think if Apple, Google et al would just admit that they do this people would be less upset about it. Instead they have their cronies at cnet write articles about “no, no, no, and here’s some technobabble as to why.”

Bullshit! We all know they’re doing it and I don’t even particularly care, I just have had too many “coincidences” in ads pop up where I can’t block them for me to accept the official narrative by these tech oligarchs.

I pretty much assume there is no privacy anymore and have come to terms with it. Google/Apple know everything you do and where you go, credit card companies know everything you pay for, and of course can't forget the government. They all probably share the information or have access to it in some way or another.
I noticed that anyone Generation X or especially older seem to be bothered by it most. Growing up with it and seeing/understanding tech evolve makes it easier to deal with. It's the price we pay for modern convenience and having information available anywhere instantly.

 

[XR7-4.6]

I agree the internet used to be worse in some ways. Remember the search bars that were borderline viruses?
I have always just run an ad blocker on my browser, and that is good enough.

The targeted advertising isn't so bad in some ways. If am going to hear or watch an ad I would rather it's something I am interested in or actually considering buying




I pretty much assume there is no privacy anymore and have come to terms with it. Google/Apple know everything you do and where you go, credit card companies know everything you pay for, and of course can't forget the government. They all probably share the information or have access to it in some way or another.
I noticed that anyone Generation X or especially older seem to be bothered by it most. Growing up with it and seeing/understanding tech evolve makes it easier to deal with. It's the price we pay for modern convenience and having information available anywhere instantly.

Yeah that’s my general attitude towards the privacy end of it, at the end of the day where I truly believe the conspiracy that they are constantly listening, it really is just to try to sell you crap. As far as the deep state using it in cahoots with the tech companies to spy on us, I mean I can believe it, but to what end should I be concerned? Every mass shooter has a digital footprint full of red flags and it’s always uncovered after the fact, never preemptively where the act could theoretically be prevented by an agency.

Personally I’m more bothered by the planned obsolescence. I’m convinced updates deliberately accelerate the battery drain in older phones.