Is your phone really listening to your conversations? Well, turns out it doesn’t have to
This article was first published in The Conversation Have you ever chatted with a friend about buying a certain item and been targeted with an ad for that same item the next day? If so, you may have wondered whether your smart phone was “ listening ” to you. Watch the latest News on Channel 7 or stream for free on 7plus >> But is it really? Well, it’s no coincidence the item you’d been interested in was the same one you were targeted with. But that doesn’t mean your device is actually listening to your conversations — it doesn’t need to. There’s a good chance you’re already giving it all the information it needs. Can phones hear? Most of us regularly disclose our information to a wide range of websites and apps. We do this when we grant them certain permissions, or allow “cookies” to track our online activities. So-called “first-party cookies” allow websites to “remember” certain details about our interaction with the site. For instance, login cookies let you save your login de...