ANOTHER Facebook user has claimed that the social network is listening to her real-life conversations after her daughter spotted something odd on her feed.
Shannon, from Louisiana, couldn’t believe it when holiday ads started showing up on Facebook right after they were chatting about them.
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“Last night my husband and I were looking for rooms in Puerto Rico for an upcoming trip that we have and my daughter was sitting on the floor listening to our conversation,” she explained.
“Today she sends me this: ‘Our phones listen because y’all were talking about where to stay for vacation’.
“Now she sends me a video of what’s showing on her feed on Facebook.
“She didn’t pull up any information on her phone about Puerto Rico or where to stay, so this is on her phone, strictly from a conversation that she had with her parents.”
It’s not the first time Facebook has been accused of snooping on people’s conversations – but it’s nothing more than an urban myth.
There has never been any solid evidence – beyond hearsay and anecdotes – that the social media giant is recording conversations.
We’ve previously heard how an American coffee shop owner spotted ads for oat milk after a conversation she had about the dairy alternative.
And a man in Birmingham thought Facebook was listening too after ads for a VR arcade started appearing following a chat about them.
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Can Facebook listen to your conversations?
Facebook has repeatedly denied the claims, highlighting that it bases the ads you see on your interests and information from your profile.
A number of independent investigations have found no evidence that the US tech titan secretly listens to its users.
Experts say that, while Facebook hoards plenty of data, it’s extremely unlikely that the company secretly records hundreds of millions of people.
The key point is that Facebook doesn’t have to.
It knows enough about you from your browsing data and profile information to target you with very specific ads.
Facebook is able to build quite a detailed picture of what makes us tick.
Like many claims of Facebook hijacking phone microphones, the appearance of the ads was purely circumstantial.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
