So I've been noticing for the past few months some strange coincidences happening on my facebook newsfeed and particularly with the ads I see on any given website. The first incident happened back in May. I went into Subway and bought a sandwich, played on my phone a bit and went on my marry way. The next day and for a few days following every ad I saw on my computer was for Subway. I figured because I had my phone out and didn't have my location turned off, that's why I was seeing these ads. I know if you do any online shopping most of the time the ads for those websites will come up everywhere so I guessed that it was just something like that.
The second time it happened I was in victoria secret. I was there for maybe 10 minutes, just walking around. I didn't buy anything, I didn't use my phone. The next day all the ads on my computer were for victorias secret, even all the youtube video ads were for them and although I hadn't seen the company's posts on my newsfeed in years, suddenly they were there, sometimes every second post. This lasted around a week.
After that, I changed my location settings and didn't notice it happening again...Until last week. My mom was visiting and we were talking about the new Justin Bieber song that was playing on the radio. We were in my house, our phones in near us but not in use. That afternoon Justin Bieber pops up on my newsfeed as a suggested page to follow. Now I'm really creeped out. I tell my mom what's been happening and she's freaked out too. We decide to try a little experiment. We went to see the new movie Don't Breathe. Left our phones at home and bought the tickets directly from the box office. When we get home we grab our phones and start talking about the movie. Sure enough an hour later and Sony pictures is a suggested page to follow on our newsfeeds and the trailer is down a few scrolls as something we might be interested in.
I've turned off my mic for all apps and haven't had any other...happenings. Now I'm not an important person, I don't think the government is watching me or that someone is coming to take me away but unless I'm crazy, I'm pretty sure facebook monitors everything we look at, buy and apparently everything we talk about too.
Has anyone else had this happen? I get the website thing is pretty normal and having ads for stores you to go also makes sense if you have your location on but what about just talking out loud in your own home? That's the part that weirds me out the most. If it is something that's happening is that even legal?
I asked my friends about it and one said he was talking on his phone to a guy about Cabelas and then after that he had nothing but Cabelas ads. But I don't know if that can be used as evidence because I'm sure he goes on their website all the time.
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