We’ve all experienced that moment when we talk about something and then start seeing ads for it on Facebook or other sites. Are our phones secretly listening to us?
Well, yes and no.
It’s unlikely that Big Tech spends massive amounts of bandwidth constantly monitoring and analysing the conversations of millions of people worldwide. However, and this is a big but, they do collect an enormous amount of information from our devices and how we use them—linking different apps and devices to create a very detailed profile of each user. With that data they can predict your next move or interest with surprising accuracy. They can even link the profiles of different people who share the same network—like your home Wi‑Fi—to generate an even richer picture. Or they may associate your social‑media friends’ interests with yours; for example, if several of your friends ride motorbikes, you might be shown motorbike‑related ads.
All this could make you want to turn off everything and crawl under a rock, but that would be a bit extreme.
There are a few things you can do to limit the information collected about you:
- Review the ad‑personalisation settings.
- Disable microphone access for apps that don’t need it (just in case).
- Turn off location history.
- Use privacy‑focused browsers or search engines (no Chrome or Google!).
- Avoid third‑party cookies and clear them regularly.
- Limit logging into websites with external providers (e.g., “Log in with Google” or “Log in with Facebook”).
- Use a VPN.
None of these measures will make you completely anonymous, but they can help reduce tracking.
Speaking of anonymity: the “browse anonymously” option offered by some browsers does NOT keep your browsing secret. It merely prevents others who use the same computer from seeing your cookies and browsing history; it doesn’t hide your activity from the sites you visit or from network observers.
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