Listening Cell Phones

 I’m sure most people by now have had the experience of having a conversation with someone within the vicinity of their cell phones, and then shortly thereafter seeing advertisements on social media for something that they had talked about.  I had one experience that I will never forget a few years back.  I had been in my garage by myself, and I was organizing stuff that I have stored there and I was also organizing books on my book shelves. (Yes, my bookshelves are in the garage.) At one point, I came across some old issues from a magazine called Reminisce.  I of course got distracted and started looking at them.  Later on, when I was back in the house, I was logged onto my Facebook account, and there was an advertisement for Reminisce magazine!  This really surprised me because I had been alone in my garage, and I had only looked at my magazines and I hadn’t done any search for the magazines online.  I seriously thought it must be a coincidence until I was later told that it was not.  The only thing that I could think of was that I must have had my phone with me in the garage, and I must have talked to myself out loud and said something like, “Oh, my Reminisce magazines!”

This was my first weird experience of having my cell phone listen to me and then create targeted ads for me to see on social media. 😲 I may be weird but I keep a piece of tape over my cell phone’s back camera because I have no confidence that we can trust that our cell phone cameras aren’t also being used to watch us for data.