I came to the conclusion that there is definitely an ad network listening in to private conversations on users' phones and that network probably belongs to Facebook.
Recently, I was cleaning my apartment and I moved a heavy piece of furniture to vacuum the dust underneath it and I found a set of clear plastic retainers for teeth.
They must have belonged to the previous tenant who had moved out about 6 months earlier.
The retainers looked like they were 3D printed (lots of small ridges on them) and I told my wife that when I had mine (a decade earlier), they were kind of expensive but these ones were 3D printed so they must be a lot cheaper and we can probably just throw them away.
The conversation lasted no more than a minute.
Next day, I was browsing yahoo.com and the ad banner had a picture of a clear plastic retainer and was advertising 3D printed retainers.
Neither me not my wife had posted anything about the retainers anywhere or discussed it with anyone else or even looked it up on any website (neither of us cares about the subject at all; neither dentistry nor 3D printing).
This is the first time I ever saw advertising related to dentistry or 3D printing.
This is not the first time that I've experienced a creepy ad but it was definitely the most disturbing because:
1. It was an extremely specific and niche subject matter which does not relate to me in any way; it was based on an extremely unlikely freak occurrence.
2. I only spoke about it with my wife in an extremely casual way. Neither of us looked it up online on any website afterwards (we verified). The subject matter only occupied our thoughts for an extremely small amount of time.
3. The ad came up the next day after having the conversation.
I have had similar stuff come up, the most cut and dried example I could pinpoint was when on a Sunday morning, Meet the Press, which after the 2016 election I had started watching each week, was pushed off in place of a golf tournament that week. I got distracted, and started just doing some stuff around the house while it was on in the background.
I have no interest in golf, I have never searched or cared about golf in any way whatsoever. Yet, the next few weeks I started getting ads about golf stuff in FB. The only other real explanation would be that Verizon is selling my viewing information and this is somehow being linked back to my FB account.
There's this famous picture of Zuckerberg with tape over parts of a MacBook Pro next to him implying that whoever that computer belonged to didn't feel that even Apple's security was enough to protect their privacy. (I can't remember if that's suppose to be his laptop or just one he's coincidentally next to)
Recently, I was cleaning my apartment and I moved a heavy piece of furniture to vacuum the dust underneath it and I found a set of clear plastic retainers for teeth. They must have belonged to the previous tenant who had moved out about 6 months earlier. The retainers looked like they were 3D printed (lots of small ridges on them) and I told my wife that when I had mine (a decade earlier), they were kind of expensive but these ones were 3D printed so they must be a lot cheaper and we can probably just throw them away. The conversation lasted no more than a minute.
Next day, I was browsing yahoo.com and the ad banner had a picture of a clear plastic retainer and was advertising 3D printed retainers. Neither me not my wife had posted anything about the retainers anywhere or discussed it with anyone else or even looked it up on any website (neither of us cares about the subject at all; neither dentistry nor 3D printing). This is the first time I ever saw advertising related to dentistry or 3D printing.
This is not the first time that I've experienced a creepy ad but it was definitely the most disturbing because:
1. It was an extremely specific and niche subject matter which does not relate to me in any way; it was based on an extremely unlikely freak occurrence.
2. I only spoke about it with my wife in an extremely casual way. Neither of us looked it up online on any website afterwards (we verified). The subject matter only occupied our thoughts for an extremely small amount of time.
3. The ad came up the next day after having the conversation.