This was happening to me until I removed Facebook and Facebook Messenger from my phone. I believe these apps listen to conversations even when you aren’t using them. I am not alone in believing this.
Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
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Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#121. Did she discuss looking at houses with you or anybody in emails or social media messages?
2. Did her smartphone location ever correspond with a house that is listed on the MLS in the past week?
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#13Did either one of you login to amazon, Facebook, google, etc on one of the other persons device? If so there is likely still a tracking cookie associating you with her device. And your searches are causing her device to be targeted.
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#14did you invite her to come see the open house by texting her "hey, wanna come see an open house"?
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#15A totally plausible explanation for this (as plausible as any Amazon Echo passive speech recognition ad targeting theory) is that she's been seeing these ads for weeks, but they were completely irrelevant and her mind filtered them out until she happened to have house hunting / martial arts movies on her mind after these events.
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#16This was happening to me until I removed Facebook and Facebook Messenger from my phone. I believe these apps listen to conversations even when you aren’t using them. I am not alone in believing this.
Just revoke microphone access.
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#17> Is this what the Internet is like for "regular" people? If so, holy shit.
Presumably. Even with the best precautions (ad blocking, etc) some tracking still slips through the cracks. I don’t want to imagine what it’s like for the average idiot who installs every single crappy app, gives it all the permissions and logs in with their Facebook account into them.
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#18My guess would be: 1) Facebook (ie instagram) knows you are in a relationship 2) Facebook knows girlfriend's location from being signed in (on Instagram) 3) Facebook knows locations are at open houses from data gathered from other users or around the web. Or maybe Facebook knows that going to a few totally new random residential locations in a short period of time, combined with girlfriend's other engagement activiti…
Also the fact that both of them are in the same physical location frequently, at key times, even if your hadn't set your relationship status it might figure it out.
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#19Did you guys use zillow/trulia to look up listings?
Re: Ask HN: Girlfriend is being shown ads depending on what we do together. How?
#20I don't know how this is happening exactly, but I want to add that it has also been happening to myself and to my friends for quite some time.