We all know we’re living in a strange technological age but sometimes things can get out of hand. So out of hand that you may think that your phone is listening to everything it technically can. And not just listening but sending that data to someone who’s going to use it to target you with ads. You either heard about this or had an eerie experience that led you to this article. Here, we will try to get to the bottom of this issue once and for all.
First of all, you should know that the answer we come up with is maybe heavily leaning towards yes. That’s just how it is. However, there are many factors involved here, and depending on what’s your personal status, the answers may vary. It depends on the type of phone, apps installed, your habits, and many other things. However, if you want to test this theory out, keep on reading.
We also must address the meta issue here that’s already happening without you knowing anything about it. Yes, as soon as you typed the keywords phone listening or something similar, it’s possible that you’ve just changed your situation. Perhaps the apps have triggers that automatically cut any type of listening or spying as soon as you do that. We don’t know that for sure but it’s a possibility.
Moving on, what you actually want to do is think of something that you wouldn’t usually do or buy and remember it. People have tried this before with subjects that are completely unrelated to their previous searches and had mixed results. We here at The VPN Lab think that this might be a mistake as the program will automatically discard anything that sounds out of the ordinary as “non-actionable intel”.
So, it has to be something on the fringes of your normal routine but still conceivably something you would do or buy. It’s best to think of it as either an activity or an item. So, you might want to go skiing, bungee jumping, or cart racing. Or you might decide to buy an ax, model train, or toys. The choice is yours. All you have to do now is mention following the pattern we came up with.
It runs for two weeks with one extra week, just to be sure. There are seven days in a week and you don’t mention those words on the second, fourth and sixth day during the first week. During the second week, you stay quiet about the subject for the whole four days starting with the second day. And we leave the third-week schedule up to you. Now, it’s best to mention this while you’re on the phone with someone at least once a week.
Also, we don’t recommend just yelling the keyword into your phone as that might be too obvious. Try to say it once or twice per day and not more than that for the same reasons. We ran three separate tests and two were successful with the third one failing miserably. And that was the one we were hoping will bust the whole thing wide open. So, we cannot conclusively say that your phone is listening to you.
However, we did get the ads for shovels although we don’t have a yard and did see offers for vacations we were testing out. So, there’s that. We’re really interested in your results. And we know that it sounds weird that we’re collecting information on information collection but that’s where we are at. Feel free to write your experiences in the comments below.
Finally, when it comes to privacy, we would be remiss if we didn’t recommend you get a VPN. You can take a look at our Top 10 VPNs list or simply check out our reviews of the top providers like Surfshark, NordVPN or ExpressVPN. Actually, we have a really great deal for our readers. You will get 82% off your 2-year Surfshark VPN subscription and deal with most of the privacy and security issues.