I work on a .mil installation, in a building that is essentially a faraday cage. The work centers are personal electronics free zones, which means that my phone sits on my desk idle and without network connection from 0700 until we step out for lunch. The only apps that I have on my phone are AccuWeather, Windy, NavFed, and pandora. I occasionally use Google Maps for distance trips. I allow none of my apps have those so called 'global permissions' for camera or anything else other than single use occasions, which I authorize for that single instance only.
This sort of thing happens to me all the time:
My normal search items and internet pit stops are rocketry, WWII/GW tabletop games. When skynet decides to target me with 'office conversation ads', my normal search item emails and ads go to virtually nil for several days, regardless of my web browsing!
Last week the whole office (8 people) was discussing hydroponics, which morphed into a discussion about pickling and canning, while I was working in one of the secure work spaces.
I've never hydroponiced, pickled, or canned a single time in my life, nor have I EVER searched such terms with my personal or professional accounts. For three consecutive days after the office discussion noted above, my personal time on my home internet browsing was all but dominated with advertisements about hydroponics, pickling, canning, and food preservation. Same with my spam filter on my email, absolutely filled with email about that stuff. My usual stuff, which is the sum total of my web activity....virtually nothing!
After noting it for the third day, the new guy in the office also came clean that his feed was similarly biased and had been for several days, even though he had not searched for any of it himself.
The running joke is that you can always tell what the office is interested in by what shows up in our internet ad presentation, even if you weren't there for the discussion! We've even done some fairly crazy targeted topics to prove to the new guy that it happens and that it's not random chance or our collective imaginations. His admission that hydroponics was dominating his ad and spam email feed was the final event that showed him it was no mere coincidence.
* I actually don't give a darn about the ads(they're all but invisible to me when I do my various web browsing or purchasing, and 99.9% of the emails get filtered out by the spam filter), it the seemingly impossible way in which they get the idea to target me with the ads for things I NEVER looked up or EVER discussed personally that gives me the heebie jeebies.
Even when you think it CAN'T listen, it does and it is. But I'm sure that I'll be told that I need to change the tin foil in my hat!
