Most people believe that they have received an online advert as a result of their devices covertly listening to an offline conversation, despite there being no evidence that this takes place.
at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and her colleagues surveyed 886 people in the US, the Netherlands and Poland to discover their views about online advertising. The team chose these countries believing that they represented a range of potential opinions about surveillance, with US privacy laws generally seen as weaker than European ones.
When asked whether they had been shown an ad relating to a previous, offline conversation, 78 per cent of those in the US said they had, while the figures were 67 per cent for the Netherlands and 53 per cent for Poland. In total, slightly more than half of respondents agreed with the idea that our devices are spying on us for the benefit of advertising companies.
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鈥淔or many people, this is the only way they see the possibility of surveillance or how their data could be used,鈥� says Strycharz. People tend to ignore or be less aware of real tracking techniques like cookies, she says.
Respondents in the US were more likely to agree they felt 鈥渃reeped out鈥� by such adverts, while those in Poland were more likely to say they were pleased to encounter these ads, because they were tailored towards them
Despite a complete absence of proof that adverts are served in this way, along with strenuous denials from social networks and tech hardware manufacturers, the belief that it happens seems to persist.
鈥淭his speculative or conspiratorial thinking is probably a sensemaking device,鈥� says at the University of Leeds, UK. 鈥淧eople find suspicious connections between their offline interpersonal conversations and the online content delivered to them, even if in practice the content was likely recommended because their friend searched for it.鈥�
Meanwhile, the idea that advertisers are listening in fits with broader narratives about technology, says Lupinacci, who points out that social media feeds and search engine results generally are personalised to individual users based on their data, while endless reports of data leaks and breaches have made people distrustful about the way their data is handled.
鈥淲e actually argue that it kind of doesn鈥檛 matter if it happens, if people believe it happens,鈥� says Strycharz, as people may change their behaviour in response to perceived surveillance. 鈥淢aybe you feel like your privacy is invaded, or maybe you鈥檙e going to not say things in front of your phone because you feel you are being listened to.鈥�
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