The past year was very rough for Facebook. There were so many allegations about private information leaking and abuse. In Mark Zuckerberg’s hearing, he admitted that Facebook cannot listen to conversation and all the relevant information that is needed for ad optimization is gathered on clever algorithms and searches that are done by you.
Facebook was a part of Cambridge Analytica which are responsible for many different campaigns and using people’s information without any permission. Facebook was found guilty for sharing information with third-party applications and violating consumers privacy, agreed to pay the highest penalty of $5 billion.
After that, the company imposed many different regulations and they claim that they’ve learned from their mistakes. Facebook updated its privacy policy and implicated couple of different restrictions in order to keep people’s private information safe.
However, many people from all around the world claim that Facebook is listening to your conversations. This allegation came when people started seeing ads related to their latest conversation. This is not happening just with Facebook, but also with Google and other ad serving platforms.
The fact is that they must crawl for people information if you agree to share it with them in order to see more relevant ads. Otherwise, we’ll be just annoyed with ads that have no correspondence with your lifestyle.
Experts and people responsible at such companies claim that it is impossible to listen to your conversation and that they use an algorithm so smart that can even predict user behavior. However, we know that spying on people is very possible with today’s technology and all that was revealed through Edward Snowden who revealed to the world that CIA can spy on everyone through video, audio and location tracking.
People’s privacy we never in a more compromised state and people feel insecure about sharing their private information on social media.
However, Adelaide Bracey from Sydney claims that has proof that company giants are listening to our conversations. The 23-year-old children entertainer claims that Facebook had used the information to show relevant ads, and she only spoke about that with her close friends.
This creepy scandal is getting worse as she claims that she was chatting about saunas a few weeks ago with her close friends and her Facebook newsfeed was flooded with sauna ads.
Adelaide raised a concern with her story as she claims that she did not google anything about saunas or provide some kind of hint to the connection with that topic. The only source was the conversation that she had with her close friend.
Usually, platforms collaborate with one another and if you search something on Google or Facebook, the next few days you will be shown relevant ads from that search. But it seems like that is not the case in this situation.
According to expert security solutions Adam Brown that works at software and microchip maker Synopsys says that Adelaide’s case could have been triggered by number of things.
He claims that sauna ads could be a result of other information sources and artificial intelligence (AI). As we mentioned before, companies that use AI can predict user behavior by carefully analyzing all the variables. For example, maybe her close friend has searched about saunas and they checked-in on the same location that day. These correlations might be overlooked for the first time, but it seems that the software is very powerful.
Another possibility is that Adelaide has performed a search that is related to saunas. The software is so smart analyzing searches so you do not have to type the exact search to see ads from it. For example, if you search something about horses, you might start seeing ads about the Breeders Cup 2019. It does not need to be the specific search term.
She could also have her location tracking enabled while she was passing near a sauna. The sauna company might use location tracking targeting advertising, which is why she saw that particular ad.
Companies claim that it is impossible to listen to people’s conversations and all the targeting is done through clever AI software that analyzes people’s behavior. The mystery still remains as so many people get ads relevant to their conversations.
