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How much proof is there that smart tvs and phones listen to you?
(sh.itjust.works)
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this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2026
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Privacy
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There's no need for uploading a constant audio feed or transcript (something that would be easy for researchers to detect in the network logs) to show you an advertisement like that.
Your phone knows all the things you wrote in the post, namely: your location, that you are physically with those friends, the wifi network, the search history of everyone there. Because of all that metadata, advertisers probably know you were playing a TTRPG, maybe even the specific one
I normally have GPS and Bluetooth disabled, so my position would have to be guessed based on cell towers. We were not even on the same WLAN (because the WLAN was down in the vacation home, much to our dissatisfaction).
While I can't rule out somebody in our group stealthily googling the tablets, phones while playing is generally frowned upon.
So yeah, being on the same cell tower as someone I know who might have searched for it might be the only other explanation.
The adventure itself didn't have anything to do with the tablets, that was just our group doing strange stuff, like always.