Personal creepy tech stories

Here is a personal story that I didn't say to a lot of people, only few tech aware people. I was asked by one of my old friends to be his gym buddy because he needed motivation to lose weight. We went together in a "gym" (basement of a security guard that was into fitness). This gym wasn't advertised anywhere or known beyond the word of mouth. It was basically a basement of a guy that didn't want to pay licensing fees or taxes so he would say that if someone comes snooping around that we are all just his friends using his personal gym. Most of times I was there just being on phone, playing offline vidya or listening to music. There was no wifi in sight and I didn't have any facebook app. 2 months after going to gym regularly I got a commercial on facebook about proteins and vitamin supplements. I didn't ever say anything on social media about going to gym. I never took a picture of me training or being fit, or in that time period. I never hooked up online in the gym or around it. I didn't have facebook app installed.... The only idea I get about facebook knowing I was in that gym is by having geolocation data from my provider and pairing that up with other phones. The creepiness of that story still hunts me today.

Facebook does have your location. It can recommend friends for people you have been hanging out with. What probably happened was that you were hanging out with your buddy a lot and it was him who was posting about gym stuff. Therefore you were targeted with gym ads.

It's most likely that one of your friends mentioned you in the context of a gym on facebook. e.g. "I'm going to the gym with lainon." Google has me pegged as being 50+ and looking for a date.

>>3076 I have that friend on gym He was really self aware about his weight and he didn't want to mention going to gym until there were results. He never mentioned me or gym on his facebook during that time. >>3075 >hanging out with your buddy How does facebook know I was hanging out with my buddy? What method did they gather this info with?

>having a facebook >not unconditionally blocking all advertisements What on earth has happened to this place?

>>3078 If you log in (even in a browser) they can get it through the masts you're connected to or geo-location or even just which wifi-networks you are in range of, even if you don't connect (this one is unlikely, they'd just go for an easier option that the phone itself will tell them). If you and your buddy share the same location a lot and are already friends they can piece it together. >>3079 I think it's just OP

>>3078 NFC, or maybe even just wifi on prodmiscuous mode. Phones talk to each other all the time.

>>3080 >If you log in (even in a browser) they can get it through the masts you're connected to or geo-location or even just which wifi-networks you are in range of >he didn't read OP post >>3081 >no facebook app >no connection to wifi >no NFC how facebook gets nearby wifis data is astounding then

>>3082 >>he didn't read OP post Even if he didn't log in at the gym there's a pretty good chance he logged in at some other time while with his friend. Even if he wasn't connected to wifi there's still the masts.

>>3082 your phone's MAC address is available for all to see if they want to, if you have wifi turned on(not necessarily connected). Friend's phone may have recognized OP's MAC, forwarded data "OP is with Friend" to facebook, and thus OP and Friend get similar ads.

>>3084 I'm not sure if that is technically possible because the Wifi chips in most phones don't support promiscuous mode, so it wouldn't be possible to capture probe requests from another phone. I like the way you're thinking though. >>3082 >how facebook gets nearby wifis data is astounding then Wifi works by Access Points sending out periodic beacons containing the Network Name, MAC address, Channel number and other information clients need to connect. Your phone picks up these beacons and in the Wifi Settings page turns them into a list of nearby networks you can connect to. This data about which networks are near you can obviously be stored and passed on to a 3rd party over the internet. I'll admit that not having the Facebook App installed decreases the chances that Facebook would end up with this data but you shouldn't be astounded that an operating system made by Google isn't trying very hard to protect your privacy.

Just don't use facebook, it's easy as that.

>>3070 I wonder if stuff like ad nauseam and similar could help with this.

>>3159 Is it me, lain, or is ad nauseam completely broken

>>3070 Could be that facebook made the connection not even through your friend, but through the location of other gym goers

>>3165 It's been working fine for me, but some times reek's list tries to tell me that I don't have the userscript installed (or vice versa, I don't read it), even though I have both installed

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-35639549

>>3079 > "a facebook" You probably mean "a facebook account". Please delete your post and try again.

>>3078 >How does facebook know I was hanging out with my buddy? i don't remember what the technology is called, but either facebook or google filed a patent that turns phones into metadata mesh nets, which allows peoples phones to be identified even if they have no affiliation with the program, the ethics are obviously grey since its getting your information without your permission, but its not exactly illegal either, its just pinging phones off phones using phones that willingly accepted the terms and conditions, carrying a smart phone is now dangerous to your privacy >>3082 >>3115 see above >picture unrelates

>>4599 >image Is it time to start wearing metal underwear?

>>49213 put a sheet of tin foil on your lap

>>4921 Just go on a Wi-Fi hiatus for a week or whatever before ya imbregnate people unless you want your kid to have an extra chromosome

>>4595 Jesus Christ, relax.

>>5564 Except it take over 100 days to produce a spermatozoon. Get ready for some long holidays.

Take off the tinfoil op, facebook marketing and data collection is pretty straightforward and not something out of this world. You happened to be in the age group and area which an ad was running and now you are suffering from confirmation bias because you heard stuff about facebook being scary. Don't get me wrong, facebook is not for people caring about privacy, but its "only" methods of data collection are actual user input and location data.

>>5571 Um partly true.It has been pretty much confirmed that facebook collects data on you and profiles you even if you are not registered on facebook. They do this by scanning the email contacts of its actual users, then by recording the IP of visitors on websites that have facebook like buttons, and then by combining the IP with the emails. Also a NSA guy at a conference has said that Google and Facebook record everything you type in even without you pressing the 'send' button. While both are in theory location and user input, it is scary how much they can track you without you doing any explicit actions to be tracked. At this point many are just being tracked by association. Though, your part about the confirmation bias is probably right.

>>5565 this is how you spot people that have not yet calmed down since their migration from 4chan

>>5571 You can also check how Facebook listens in on you. The recent soykafstorm is by no means coincidental. I have firsthand experience of banners appearing in people's accounts after having a single short conversation on the topic in front of the device. We have tried it a couple times with the same iPhone, which may also be a factor, but AFAIK it happens on Android as well. If you still use Facebook, just try it at home. Talk about some topic that has nothing to do with you, no other connections, by your phone and report back. I can guarantee you that your banners will change.

>>5626 If this were true you would be able to open up wireshark and see outbound traffic to facebook servers.

>>5626 Maybe deny the microphone access? Also of you're the kind of person that firmly believes that an app is listening to your converzations then stop using facebook.

>>5643 If*. Sorry I just woke up.

>>5643 >Maybe deny the microphone access? You mean politely ask the Google controlled OS to deny microphone access and hope that Facebook engineers are not smart enough to bypass it?

>>5641 Isn't there a constant connection to facebook servers for any device with it installed, if only for push notifications to work (though likely not only for that)?

I don't have any particularly creepy stories, but I have a funny anecdote similar to the facebook ad story. My friend sent a screenshot of his phone to a group chat complaining that "Facebook's ads are getting weird now." The screenshot was of an ad for a "dating" (probably escort) website that focuses on connecting men with young, bratty women. Then the least tech savvy person in the group responded with "Facebook ads are targeted" and others in the chat confirmed that they don't get weird ads like that, just ads related to their interests. When I asked him about it in person, he just said he didn't know why facebook would think he was interested in that. >>5572 >Also a NSA guy at a conference has said that Google and Facebook record everything you type in even without you pressing the 'send' button. Can you link a recording of his speech? Or at least his name and the conference this was done at?

>>5646 >ask the Google controlled OS AOSP exists and you can flash it, you know. You can check the whole source code if you like. Everything google related only comes if you have the gapps installed. >and hope that Facebook engineers are not smart enough to bypass it? You clearly have no idea how android works. And then again, if you're going to put on your tinfoil hat THIS hard just stop using facebook altogether and the problem's gone. There's a soykaf ton of security reasons why you shouldn't use it besides what they could do through a phone app.

>>5641 You can easily tell the difference between pings and streams of audio data.

>>5651 >AOSP exists and you can flash it, >just stop using facebook altogether Lets put our smarty hat on and assume that a person who flashes AOSP for security/privacy reasons also doesn't use Facebook. We're obviously not talking about this type of person. So stock Android + Facebook app, the advice is deny the microphone acces"? I thought apps will refuse to install unless you give them all the permissions they ask for?

>>5659 > I thought apps will refuse to install unless you give them all the permissions they ask for? Depends on the Android version. From 6 onwards apps won't get permissions from the get go while installing, and rather they'll ask for them when they need them during run time. You can deny every access to facebook on runtime or via app settings and the app will still work, but it'll whine as soon as you want to use any of the features that need said permissions. So if we're talking about the kind of person who knows soykaf about sec and want to use facebook while denying microphone access, they can do it and still use the app as intended.

>>5662 I have a very similar problem. I bough a new smartphone, and it had a number of apps coded into the operating system, that I am unable to remove. and unfortunately, the specific phone I hve has any type of admin or factory reset features locked to the carrier to prevent flashing roms or circumventing normal personbook and all of the google apps. I am surprised it did not ask me to enter a facebook profile in order to use the phone. The state of megacorps controlling the lives of tech users is astounding. I spoke with google for 2 hours on the phone and they admitted that there is no requirement to use their services (even though the phone does not work without them) and I asked the phone company to grant me access to modify their phones OS and I didn't care that it voided the warranty, but even their store representatives admitted that thy were not sure it could be done. Another thing that upsets me is that the no namephone that i bought does not have any sort of 3rd part support for cracking the default operating system, by either rooting and deleting the things I want, or by getting a new OS all together. It is like kicking dead whales down the beach living where I live too because there is one carrier for my entire area

>>5664 Yeah, that has happened to me too a lot of times in the past when buying no name phones. It's kind of ironic if you ask me. Still, are you completely sure that you can't root it in any way? There're a couple of generic tools to root no name phones (King Root comes to mind) that usually work on chinese phones and such.

The tale of the man who couldn't tell his tale without attracting undesired attention to some log files.

>>5650 It wasn't an NSA guy, it was a private investigator https://youtu.be/dNZrq2iK87k

>>3079 Sad but true - if you want to keep contact with friends you need to have messenger - nowadays nobody uses normal sms or calls.