Users convinced Facebook 'listening' to conversations : The Standard

• Mirror 04th May 2019 14:33:04 GMT +0300

Everyone I meet these days has a story about Facebook "listening in" to their conversations. They'll be discussing something relatively obscure that they haven't ever searched for online and, hey presto! Within hours, an advert for that exact product pops up in their news feed. I tend to be fairly sceptical about these stories. After all, the suggestion that Facebook is secretly wiretapping all of its 2.38 billion customers to deliver targeted ads seems a little far-fetched - not to mention illegal. But then it happened to me - or, I should say, to a friend.

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We met up for a drink in the pub and I was telling him about my visit to a kitchen designer, and his suggestion that we should have a two-tone kitchen with pale grey cabinets and a dark blue island.

This was just a casual conversation. Neither of us looked up any pictures or typed anything into our phones. Then a couple of hours later, I got a message from the same friend, who was freaked out by an ad that had just popped on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook): "Freaky - but this kitchen ad popped up on my Instagram after we'd been talking about your kitchen ideas," he said. " Big Brother is watching." I should add that this friend has no plans to do up his own kitchen, so there's no reason he would be searching for anything related to kitchen design.

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A little unsettling to say the least. More than a coincidence? As it turns out, this experience is incredibly common. After a Mirror article on the topic went viral a couple of weeks ago, we asked readers to send in their stories, and we were deluged with responses. "I was talking to my father a few weeks back about how I was thinking about purchasing a battery charger to replace the broken one that we previously used," wrote one reader, Ian.

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"I never searched for the item or anything like that. Just spoke about it. "No more than 15 minutes later I get on to check facebook, and there are numerous ads for battery chargers popping up in my feed. "I was sincerely disturbed by this and wondered how it could happen. The only conclusion that I could formulate was that I was being spied on via audio." Another reader, who goes by the screen name BrokenGothDoll, had a similar experience: "Changing the bed a few weeks ago, I said to my husband I would eventually get round to buying some hard wearing fabric to cover the base of the bed with, because ours has been badly shredded by our cats," she said.

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"Within 48 hours I was getting adverts on my Facebook feed for elasticated 'skirts' that fit round the base of your bed! I hadn't searched. I had no idea such a thing existed. "I said to my husband 'I see you have been searching for something to cover the base of the bed'. He hadn't!" Another reader, Carolyn, said the same thing happened to her. "Last year, a friend from Western Australia was visiting (we live in Queensland, a good 4 1/2 hours flight away). We do not see each other often. Maybe once in 3-4 years," she said. "Anyway, my FB ads are normally pretty predictable. Women's and children's clothing, toys, disability related stuff, etc. All things that could easily be traced to pages I visit and things I talk about. "But then my friend and her husband mentioned they were looking at motorbikes. Something I have absolutely 0 interest in. "Low and behold, within 2 days I was seeing ads for motorbikes, helmets etc. a few days later they went home, and I have never had such an ad show up again.  "Coincidence? Who knows. But to me it was just plain spooky..." The theory that Facebook is using users' smartphone microphones to listen in to their conversations and target them with ads has been around for years.

But despite the mountains of "evidence", Facebook has always categorically denied it. "Facebook does not use your phone's microphone to inform ads or to change what you see in News Feed," the company's statement reads. "Some recent articles have suggested that we must be listening to people's conversations in order to show them relevant ads. This is not true. "We show ads based on people’s interests and other profile information – not what you’re talking out loud about. "We only access your microphone if you have given our app permission and if you are actively using a specific feature that requires audio. "This might include recording a video or using an optional feature we introduced two years ago to include music or other audio in your status updates."

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