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[Lifehacker] - Your Phone Isn’t Spying on You to Show You Ads (It’s Worse Than That)
(lifehacker.com)
this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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Your phone doesn't listen to you, but it builds a fingerprint and uses that fingerprint to serve ads.
It also serves ads for things based on who you've been around recently. The example given was the guy's wife asked for a power drill for her birthday, and then the guy started seeing power drill ads.
This wasn't because of the conversation, but because his wife had looked up power drills and opened herself up to ads about them. Because the husband had been around the wife, the ad algorithms thought he might be into the same sort of things she is, and so they started serving him ads based on what they think his wife would like.
The article takes issue with this and considers it an invasion of privacy. It's the same sort of story we've seen dozens of times before; John Oliver did it better.
You are my favorite kind of person. May you always find the best parking spot right in front of your destination and may your pets always choose to cuddle with you, even when there's a cozier spot nearby.