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Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most of the post is disputing the point you're making. Did you read it?
Absolutely caught red handed - but I dont think Apple paid out 100m because "eh its easier this way".
My wife and I, just being goofy, have an inside joke featuring a relatively uncommon name that we ocasionally yell out, like a few times a week. Two months ago we got junk mail addressed to UNCOMMON NAME + our last name. I don’t think its a coincidence. Something is listening. Its kind of messed up that I am a normally rational, skeptical minded person, fairly knowledgable about information security and in 2024 I can…
Are you sure it's not because of an opsec fail? eg. you used your nickname when registering for some service, and that made it into some sort of mailing list? What you're seemingly implying (ie. that there's some sort of secret listening system that can figure out your nickname, tie it back to your address, and then send spam to that) makes little sense. Your name + address is already readily available. It's in the public records. You freely hand it over to random websites (eg. for online shopping). There's zero benefits in anyone making such a system to figure out people's names using surreptitious listening.
My wife has a very new ( I sh_t you not. She was a bit gobsmacked. I was neither surprised nor disturbed. That's real anecdata, my friends. It could have been coincidence, and while we have nothing to hide, it's not an optimal situation, whatever the cause. Besides, we ain't buying no Gucci slippers, no way, no how.
>Gucci
Gucci is classified as an "aspirational luxury" brand. In other words, luxury for poor people. It makes total sense that it would be pushed to people in public housing. If you get recommendations for European brands you've never heard of selling $5000 t-shirts, then I'd be worried.
Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…
...unless there were actually several thousand people who performed this experiment, got a negative result, and therefore don't remember it or post anything about it.
Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…
> the technical description seems convincing. Isn't the technical hurdle just changing the "Alexa" or "Siri" wake word into a keyword for an ad campaign?
We search for everything we talk about these days…our location services are always on. The times I’ve noticed this I can usually trace it back to a friend had been searching for something and then we (our phones) were in the same place. Even the guy from the lawsuit with the doctor… his phone knows he was at that doctor and that doctor offers that procedure. Seems possible without listening.
Every time I read some technical description about why this isn't happening, the technical description seems convincing. However... A friend tested the theory a few years ago. He doesn't own a swimming pool, doesn't want to, and has never expressed any desire to. He put his and his wife's phone on the table and said to the wife (loudly), "Why don't we look into pool fencing?". She agreed with him. Shortly after, on b…
So how does the phone + ad networks decide which words to prioritize to trigger which ads when?
So for this anecdote to be true, not only would the phone have to be listening, but the targeting algorithm would need to decide to actively exclude all the other audible triggers from that time period, and fill your limited ad impression inventory with the one phrase you were intentionally testing.
How would it do that? Especially if this is indeed an outlier one-off topic of conversation that you cover in a single sentence. There would not be contextual clues (like repetition over time) that might indicate you are actually “in market” for a pool fence.
To me this is the problem with these anecdotal tests. You understood that that was an important phrase in the context of ad targeting. But how did the automated ad system know it should serve you ads on that topic, and not one of the many other advertisable topics you talk about over the course of several days? Or that your phone hears over several days?
I think the article would be improved if he added a bit about what evidence he would accept.
Go to a public library without any electronic devices and pick up a print copy of a magazine with some ranked list of products or brands. Select a handful that you don't think would be targeted towards you. For example, beauty products, childcare products, cruises marketed towards seniors, etc.
Over the course of a few weeks, use Siri to send text messages mentioning these brands, add them to your Reminders list, etc. Just don't allow it to redirect you to any apps or web searches, since that would invalidate the experiment.
Browse Apple News daily, which uses Apple's internal ad service. If you see any ads related to at least 2 of your canary brands, you have plausible evidence that your Siri interactions have been used for ad targeting.