Privacy

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A place to discuss privacy and freedom in the digital world.

Privacy has become a very important issue in modern society, with companies and governments constantly abusing their power, more and more people are waking up to the importance of digital privacy.

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iPhone is listening (self.privacy)

submitted 11 months ago by Telcontar to c/privacy@lemmy.ml

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Ok I have a question. I'm kinda a noob when it comes to privacy. I'll follow the guides and do the things to try to minimize ad companies selling my data etc.

Some basic stats: I have a Samsung running stock android. My GF has an iPhone. I use brave as my standard browser (I know that's not super popular but I haven't made the move to Firefox yet.) I have DNS level ad blocking on my router cause I hate ads with a passion. She uses safari.

So here's the deal. I was browsing the web looking for gift ideas for Christmas and came across some moccasins I liked. I mentioned to her that I liked them and browsed their website for a few minutes.

About 10 minutes after that, she's checking her Instagram and sees an ad for the exact brand of moccasin I just told her about. Just for kicks, she also checks her Facebook and sees the same ad there (makes sense cause it's the same company).

My question is basically how on earth did she get an ad for something I looked up? And how can we prevent that from happening? It's very very disconcerting to have ads pop up on others' phones right after looking that thing up.

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[–] rzlatic@lemmy.ml 5 points 11 months ago

same thing happened to me. talked about very specific health-related topic, didn't googled it or anything, the next day instagram came up with ads for the very same specific health subject.

for a start, you can check instagram's permissions (and facebook of you use it, it's meta too) and disable access to microphone.

however, that leaves whatsapp which is also meta and mic is more of a neccesity than insta/fb, but in my case, haven't seen weird ads for subjects i didn't typed into any devices since i disabled insta mic access.