Is your phone reading your mind? How do you see ads for things you were thinking about just minutes ago

How many times have you felt your phone has just read your mind. It has happened with every one of us at least once or twice. In this age of technology we all know what targeted advertisement means. You search for something and type it in your phone or the search platform and multiple advertisement keep popping on your social media for weeks related to that protect.

This is normal for all of us now as we know our cookies and cache are saved by various apps in our phones but you start feeling suspicious when you don’t even mention about the product anywhere. You just think about it and magically the ad for the same product appears on your phone. So it really magic? Or somehow your phone has analysed you so much that it can predict what you might be thinking at any given moment?

Let us take another example: You mention buying a new suitcase over dinner. Later, an advertisement for luggage appears on your phone. You pause. You never typed “suitcase” into a search engine. How could an advertiser possibly know?


In the above examples, a simple difference is at one place you really talked about a suitcase to someone, but again how can your phone know what you spoke during a dinner conversation, you never mentioned it anywhere in your phone.

This really raises questions about how secure is your phone: Is it recording you?

How can your phone show ads for something you never searched for?

A search is only one possible clue for the targeted ads. While one relevant advertisement does not confirm the theory that your phone is reading your thoughts or recording your conversation. One possible explanation can be that the advertising systems tracked your earlier online activity and after running its algorithm it showed you what seemed relevant as per your searchers.

Sometimes giving too much attention to that ad also makes it meaningful. May be the ad popped on your screen at earlier occasions but you only thought about it now so you noticed the ad after that.

What does Google say about personalised advertising?

Google has explained in multiple occasions that a persons sees a particular advertisement when they interact with similar ads or watch videos related to that. The platform draws interest from your activity then shows you the personalised advertisement.

It will also depend your ad setting for a particular app or your device. You may have searched something on your laptop but you are using the same account on your phone so you are watching the ads on your smartphone also.

Suppose you are planning a trip. You look for place to visit, you plan the itinerary on your phone, you book your tickets on laptop. Now the advertiser knows you are going somewhere, so you may get ads for luggage, travel bags, shoes.

Imagine watching several travel videos before deciding you need luggage. An advertiser may already have clues about your interest in travel.

The suitcase is just an example. It cannot explain every advertisement. However, it shows how an interest might become visible through behaviour before you consciously decide to buy something. These prediction can feel like your phone is reading your mind. But the reality is that you can see the trail behind it.

Why do we remember the ads that seem to know too much?

We feel at various instances that this ad has appeared on our screen for the first time. But is it the truth? One of reasons that we feel this way is confirmation bias

Psychologist Raymond Nickerson explored confirmation bias in a major 1998 review.

Confirmation bias is a theory which explains that we usually pay attention to those things which supports what we already know. It changes our perception when we look at the proof we have been searching for. It can also affect which examples receive our attention.

Suppose you already suspect your phone listens to conversations. A perfectly timed luggage advertisement may feel like strong confirmation.

But if you get an advertisement for bathroom tiles you won’t pay that kind of attention to that.

Now consider you had conversations with your friends but there were no related advertisement. You hardly notice other ads which becomes an ordinary moment for you and you rarely think of telling your friends about it.

Confirmation bias is a relevant way to explain these feelings.

Why can one strange coincidence feel like a regular pattern?

For many people, they have felt only one such instance where their ‘phone read their mind’. But when they header others speaking about it, they were sure it has happened to them many times.

This can be explained by the availability heuristic. This theory was described in a 1973 paper published by Psychologists Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman.

Availability heuristic means people often consider something “common” by how quickly they can recall examples related to it. Memorable examples can carry more weight than they deserve.

An advertisement for something you privately considered is memorable. An ordinary advertisement is easy to forget.

Later, when someone when someone is discussing if you feel your phone is reading your mind, it feels relatable and the example suddenly comes to your mind.

You may then feel that such matches happen constantly. Yet recalling a striking incident does not tell you how often it happens overall.

Confirmation bias proves how you suddenly focus on something and look for available evidence to believe in your theory. But availability concerns means how easily you can remember the relatable examples. Both offer useful ways to examine the experience.

Have researchers found apps secretly sending out audio?

You or your friends may have felt multiple times that your phone can hear you or it is receding you but does it really happen? A 2018 study called Panoptispy examined 17,260 Android apps. Researchers ran automated tests on a subset of 9,100 apps.

They found no audio files being transmitted in those tests. However, they uncovered other privacy problems including unexpected sharing of screen recordings or images.

The tests could not detect everything. The researchers also acknowledged that their methods did not include audio which was converted into texts such as voice typing.

An older study cannot establish what every app does today. So the tests provided a narrower conclusion: the tests did not reveal audio transmission, while other concerning data sharing did occur.

What should you check when an advertisement feels too personal?

You can start with information which you can investigate. The first step can be reviewing your advertising settings and consider earlier activity on other devices. Google’s My Ad Center explains which saved activity can influence personalised advertisements.

On many iPhones, you can look for Apple’s App Privacy Report. This shows when apps accessed your microphone and which apps used your sensitive information. It starts collecting your information only when you enable it.

While microphone access doesn’t mean that a recording was used for advertising but it surely raises privacy concerns.