Are cell phones "eavesdropping" on us for advertising and are we to blame?

mobile phone
Mobile Phones / Photo: Unsplash

Experts explain why advertisements for a dress, sneakers or a new mobile phone that you talked about yesterday may appear on social networks.

Namely, we first need to understand what permissions we give to our device. The applications you have on your device collect a lot of data from your phone.

What permissions do we give to applications?

Terms of use should provide clear information on how data is collected, stored and used, and it is the responsibility of users to be careful about what permissions they give.

IT expert Marko Rakar He also commented on this phenomenon of targeted ads, but points out that it is not that the mobile phone is eavesdropping on us, but that we are seeing ads related to items that we have already searched on the Internet.

"It's more of a psychological phenomenon than a real event. People mentioned something and suddenly started noticing it. "However, if they google, write somewhere, on applications, search engines, then of course they will start following such ads," Rakar told "N1“. He added that this is not a device that eavesdrops on us.

Lucian Caric, an internet security expert, on the other hand, has a slightly different view. To the question whether our mobile phone eavesdrops on us when we talk about a topic, and then we receive ads on social networks, Caric answered in the affirmative.

"It is absolutely possible, such data can be collected by all applications to which you give certain permissions, for example permission to access the recorder," Caric told N1.

He noted that this also applies to "Hey Google", which also requires access to your recorder. It is a service that allows you to perform a specific action such as searching, getting directions to your destination and creating reminders.

Caric emphasizes that applications can require access to a variety of data, from location to recorders.

"As long as the phone is running, it collects all the data, and what you wrote, even if you did not send it," he concludes.

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