
Ask HN: Do you have examples of Facebook using your microphone for ads? - lunchladydoris
A few days ago we had this thread [0] where someone asked about a Facebook ad that arrived mysteriously on their page. I saw several possible explanations for this in the thread. Later I found a post by Facebook [1] stating explicitly that it does not use the microphone for ads. I was satisfied, until last night.<p>Last night, while we were at home, my wife mentioned to me that she would like to get a storage box to hold her external hard drives. She described her ideal one as a metal box with some sort of foam to hold the drives in place. She had never searched for something like this before and wasn&#x27;t even aware that something like this existed. A couple hours later, an ad for such a product landed up on her Facebook page. I was a little freaked out.<p>So, do you have any examples of where something like this has happened to you? Am I being paranoid and this is just a coincidence? Or could Facebook actually be listening in on us?<p>[0] https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=13597225
[1] http:&#x2F;&#x2F;newsroom.fb.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;h&#x2F;facebook-does-not-use-your-phones-microphone-for-ads-or-news-feed-stories&#x2F;
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davidverhasselt
Considering that this would be pretty easy to prove, but no one has yet,
Occam's razor says this most likely was something else entirely. One possible
explanation could be that the ad was shown to her before as well but she
didn't notice it, yet it subconsciously registered and created a need or idea
for such a product (i.e. you're switching around cause and effect). Another is
that your wife is quite predictable in her demand of such a product due to
other factors that are trackable by Facebook.

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alecmuffett
If you are using Facebook on a recent phone client, or through a browser,
whenever this happens, try this:

\- There is a little "chevron" menu popdown in the advert, generally top-
right.

\- Tap it, and then pull down "Why am I seeing this?"

Then you will find out why you are seeing the advert.

Source: I used to work at Facebook

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
"One reason you're seeing this ad is that bluefrog Plumbing + Drain wants to
reach people who are part of an audience we created based on data provided by
Acxiom. Facebook works with data providers to help businesses find the right
audiences for their ads."

So, it's Acxiom doing the listening?

~~~
smaps
Axciom does all of the data buying and creating models to figure out what
people like.

Source - Used to work with Axciom data myself

------
mcjiggerlog
I find it highly unlikely and am inclined to believe Facebook on this one.

I'd say it's much more likely that your wife had seen that ad before your
conversation but wasn't particularly conscious of seeing it.

You're basically describing how advertising works - making people feel they
want to buy something without them even realising.

------
kosma
If Facebook indeed does this, it should be fairly easy to trigger by
repeatedly mentioning some kind of product in front of a running Facebook app.
If not, it's a "can't reproduce" for me.

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
How would you know whether that product's maker pays for that sort of
marketing? Perhaps if you tried ten products and got one positive, that would
suffice.

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
OK, we just made up a big fake conversation in the presence of a desktop and
laptop running fb, an iphone running the ap, and an iphone only accessing via
Safari.

We mentioned Target, including a request for upcoming sales and target credit
cards, Advil, Colgate, Liquid Plumber, Scott toilet paper, Wells Fargo (though
we need to rule that out bc my daughter's been googling them re DAPL),
Citibank, Marriott, Red Lobster, and an imaginary pending trip to Maine.

I will report back what we see.

edit: none of these do we use or see ads for.

~~~
Jill_the_Pill
10 hours later: nothing convincing. I got one for an Amex card and he got one
for Discover, but nothing exact. His other ads were verizon, geico, halls,
lay's, AT&T. Mine were only local news sites -- paper, radio and tv.

------
ClassyJacket
I do not. However, I've heard it anecdotally many times. You can definitely
find similar stories on reddit.

I'm guessing Facebook is doing some pretty complicated work to find that
interest and serve the ad, but as evil as Facebook is I doubt they're straight
up lying about using the microphone to listen and serve ads.

~~~
LoSboccacc
/puts on conspiracy hat

Facebook might obtain the ad profile match from a third party which obtained
microphone access and would let them bot claim 'at this one company we do not
use microphone recordings to target ads'

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Joeboy
Does it actually matter much whether there are current, proven examples? If
you give their app access to your microphone, they're going to use it for ad
targeting and worse as soon as it's politically / technically / economically
expedient to do so.

~~~
hellofunk
On my iPad, the Privacy settings for Microphone do not even have entries for
the official FB or Twitter apps, so I'm not sure how this could be done on
iOS. So I wonder if the user is using a different platform in question?

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davemtl
Not verbal communications, but I have seen ads relating to SMS messages I've
sent or received. Perfect example was my wife advising the vacuum cleaner was
broken, next thing I see when I logged onto Facebook was an advert for vacuum
cleaners.

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ransom1538
I have been approached by companies that wish to listen for audio on our
mobilenetworks for tv stations. They have pretty good id databases of the
shows in the background and use the information to reset ads and to sell back
to stations. They did mention facebook being a client. As far as realtime
interpretation of plain audio for ads that doesn't seem far fetched. Ad units
of these companies are the elite i wouldn't put it past them.

[https://www.audiblemagic.com](https://www.audiblemagic.com)

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xtracto
This just happened to me:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13589749](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13589749)

None of the possible justifications mentioned in the replies really apply for
the case I observed... We have had this happening two or three times, and it
is _always_ when my wife's mobile is around (I don't have FB app installed).

So for all I care, it is something that _does_ happen.

~~~
HalfwayToDice
Facebook friends are looking at the place on Facebook, so Facebook shows you
adverts for it.

It's a really basic and obvious explanation.

Nobody is secretly listening to your phone.

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teperpencoli
Coincidence. FB has over a billion daily users and each one communicates
dozens of concepts per day - if each person sees numerous ads per day then
it's a statistical certainty that someone, somewhere happens to get an ad that
matches up with something they mentioned earlier in that day or week. This is
the same reason why everyone has a story about a dream that came true.

------
ergonaught
I've had a number of ads pop up for things my wife and I have discussed
verbally without searching. Even if Facebook themselves do not monitor the
mic, nothing prevents someone else (Apple, Google, etc) from doing so and
feeding that information to FB. It's certainly occurring but it's not clear
that FB is directly responsible.

~~~
paulryanrogers
I imagine you'd notice the battery drain if that were really a mic eavesdrop.

More likely you and your wife are demographically similar to others those
advertisers are researching and targeting

------
beaverskull
I was talking to my boyfriend in the car about the idea of people having
personal plastic recycling machines in their home, where you would break down
the plastic waste you create and then make "ink"for a home 3D printer to
reprint plastic household items. This idea came to me when I was thinking
about the world's problem with plastic water bottles, at that time, in the
car. An hour later, he opened his Facebook on his phone that was on and
playing music in the car and the first ad he saw was for a 3D printer that
uses recycled plastic. I know the idea in my head goes along with current
popular issues of the times, so yes my thought process and Facebook ad could
just be coincidence, but the fact that it was a more novel and complex idea
made it amusing.

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jayceedenton
IMO this is what's known as a coincidence. The odds against seeing an advert
for a product you have just talked about are incredibly low, but there are
also a hundreds of millions people using Facebook every day, each seeing
hundreds of ads and discussing lots of products with their spouses. Eerie
coincidences are inevitable.

Derren Brown did a great demonstration of a similar phenomenon by asking 100s
of people to bet on a series of horse races. Of course one person backed the
winning horse on all races and thought it was magic. What they didn't realise
is that there were a lot of others doing this too and having one person back
all the winners was (in that experiment) an inevitability.

------
malyk
My wife and I were talking about salt. I forget the exact conversation, but
was random. Not about wanting salt for dinner or whatever just a general
conversation about salt.

Opened Facebook a little while later and ther was an ad for Morton's Salt at
the very top of my feed. I've never searched on the internet anywhere for
salt. I've never liked mortons salt on Facebook. I've never clicked on
anything remotely related to salt.

I'm 99.9% convinced facebook was open and listening to us. (There is a very
small possibility it was a coincidence, but I doubt it.)

My wife has had similar experiences where she was out at a bar talking with
friends and on the Bart ride home saw ads for topics that were discussed.

~~~
burmat
My wife has this happen to her frequently. I bought a friend a bottle of
Woodford Reserve (Bourbon) for his birthday and it appeared within a few days
for her after discussing it on the way to the party (she doesn't even drink).
Additionally, we have talked about "blue Gatorade" in the car only to have
Cool Blue Gatorade show up within a few days. The one that really freaked me
out was the "Thunderstorm" color paint that we saw a commercial for and
briefly discussed. None of these things were actively searched on her device
and were only talked about in private. I would believe some of the
explanations here but the wide spread of items makes me think that Facebook
and Instagram are passively listening to our conversations. These three items
all appeared within the same month and within 72 hours of talking about them
in person. I don't believe it could be a coincendence at this point.

------
tak2siva
Yes happened to me. I was discussing about a food item (Anchovies fish) within
a day or two I saw some ad about restaurants famous for Anchovies. It was very
surprising for me because I havent searched or even typed those words in my
mobile.

~~~
HalfwayToDice
Is this satire?

~~~
tak2siva
No it happened. I cant convince myself it could be a coincidence. I mean what
are the odds ?

~~~
HalfwayToDice
In case you are actually being serious, the odds of that happening are very
normal.

------
TazeTSchnitzel
If I assume for a moment that the microphone actually is being listened to for
ad keywords… why would it have to be Facebook, specifically, who's listening?
It could be another rogue service feeding back to Facebook.

------
benhebert
Twitter has done this to me twice.

I had a deep and random conversation about Oreos and the tv show Colony
recently.

Within a day ads started showing up on my timeline.

~~~
HalfwayToDice
Is this satire?

~~~
benhebert
No, actually happened. Both so random that I'm convinced twitter is listening
in! Not sure how I was targeted for both otherwise.

------
Beltiras
You should be able to convert this into an experiment. Find an off-the-beat
market and start talking about it in the presence of your phone (and maybe
with the app open, don't know the particulars of when the app can activate the
microphone). If an ad for a product in the space appears it would confirm the
hypothesis that FB is listening in.

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Spooky23
I doubt that FB is doing this, but I'm sure they are knowingly or unknowingly,
buying data from someone who does.

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rabboRubble
Did she perhaps recently buy hard drives? Cases for drives seems like the type
of thing to be advertised once they've connected that the buyer of the drives
is the person currently logged into FB.

------
stirkac
I talked to my friend about my tooth pain couple of days ago and I saw an ad
for dentist yesterday. Can't have it appear again for the screenshot. Keep in
mind I newer saw dentist ads before..

~~~
HalfwayToDice
Google "confirmation bias".

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giis
I think best option is try talking some 'unique' topic again and see whether
related ad popups or not.

Please do share your results :)

Ps : record the topic and take screenshot if you like to make a proof.

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aoeuaoeuaoeu333
Why does'nt someone sniff the network traffic and see if this is happening or
not. https man in the middle attacks exist.

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KleineVogel
Me and my boyfriend were talking about possible tiles to use for our future
home, we never actively looked it up, as it was a conversation that sprung
from watching a series. (In the episode during a bathroomshot we saw
interesting tiles) During this conversation I was holding my phone. Next time
I scrolled through fb, I got an ad for freakin' tiles.

~~~
KleineVogel
This has happened many times. Since I deinstalled the fb-app and use facebook
only through mobile safari, this has stopped.

~~~
hellofunk
Which platform was your FB app installed on? iOS does not provide mic access
to FB at all, it's not even in the privacy options as that app has never
requested mic access.

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Jill_the_Pill
My partner, who is bald, was sitting with his arms crossed, and I teased him
for looking like Mr. Clean. We both got ads for Mr. Clean in the next 48
hours.

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HalfwayToDice
I run a website that shows random images.

I ALWAYS get emails asking why I have showed an image that relates to what
they person was just talking about.

But the images are random! It's the well understood concept of confirmation
bias.

It's just depressing to see here, because I thought the readers of hackernews
were more sophisticated than random sampling of the general population.

~~~
HalfwayToDice
Wait... I just confirmation biased myself by only concentrating on the replies
which believed that Facebook listens via your microphone, and ignoring those
that disagreed.

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HalfwayToDice
This is an absurd urban myth, and it's embarrassing to see such nonsense on
this website.

~~~
anonu
I think its good to always be highly skeptical of all technology these days. I
don't mean that we should do so in a tin-foil hat sort of way... but we should
question everything. I saw a post on HN just a few days ago about how Vizio
(the low-cost TV supplier) was wholesale collecting and selling all usage
information to a third party... without users' consent. Its good to be
vigilant and ask the "dumb" questions sometimes...

