Is your phone really listening to you? Do you feel like a conspiracy theorist asking that question? Are you still convinced it eavesdrops all the time, no matter how paranoid it makes you sound?
For the record, I’m the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist; in fact, I’ve written multiple articles explaining why conspiracy theories are generally bunk. But honestly, I’m this close when it comes to my frickin’ phone listening in on conversations.
Allow me to illustrate:
Two ‘coincidences’ that are definitely not coincidences
Last night, my husband and I FaceTimed with our daughter, who goes to college six hours away. During our conversation, she told us a woman in her community was giving away clothes, including beautiful traditional Indian outfits. She also told us about a class assignment that involved logical fallacies.
This morning, when I opened Facebook, I saw this ad first thing:
I had not Googled. I had not Amazoned. I’d in no way searched for Indian clothing. All I did was listen to my daughter share this story from the other side of the state.
Later this morning, my husband said he’d been reading an interesting article about logical fallacies.
“Did you look up something about logical fallacies?” I asked him, “Or did it just come through your feed?”
“No, it just came through my feed,” he said.
Huh. Okay.
This isn’t the first time real-life conversation topics have shown up in my feed. But the blatantness of these “coincidences” irked me. So I decided to dig in and do a bit of research.
Researching whether phones eavesdrop made me feel like I’m crazy
In Googling all of this, I sort of expected an affirmative response, like “Yes, of course your phone is listening to you and tailoring ads to what it hears. Here are the settings you need to change to stop it.” I did not expect what I got, which basically felt like, “No, no, silly lady, that’s not happening.”
Example #1 from security.org:
“There’s no concrete evidence that a major ad platform has secretly fed your microphone audio into its ad-targeting engine. Google, Meta, and Amazon all deny it. Security researchers who have tested the claim have not found evidence of it happening at scale.”
Example #2 from a 2025 Washington Post article:
“For years, Northeastern University professor David Choffnes has helped analyze how often our phone apps and voice assistants capture audio without our knowledge, and whether recordings from gadget microphones are used to tailor advertisements.
“While he won’t completely rule out the possibility, Choffnes says ‘the odds are slim’ that an uncanny ad you see comes from your device microphones listening to what you’ve said.”
Example #3 from a 2026 CBS News article:
“So, is your phone listening to you? ‘It is not,’ said Ari Paparo, an ad industry veteran, consultant and author. ‘I’ve been asked about this a million times. And I can guarantee you that your phone is not passively listening to you for advertising purposes.’”
So…yeah.
What the experts say actually is happening doesn’t explain what happened today
Many sources said something along the lines of, “No, your phone isn’t listening to you all the time. What’s really happening is companies are using all the data they have on you to piece together really smart guesses as to what you want and targeting ads to you based on that information.”
I get that that’s happening. But that doesn’t explain what happened here.
Experts also say the data companies have on you includes people who live in your household. If you share the same Wi-Fi, what someone looks up can influence what shows up in other people’s feeds. For instance, if my husband starts researching lawnmowers, I might start seeing lawnmower ads even though I didn’t look up anything about lawnmowers.
That also doesn’t explain what happened here. Our daughter doesn’t share our Wi-Fi. There’s nothing in my husband’s or my search history that would cause Indian clothing or logical fallacies to suddenly appear right after a conversation about those things. There’s just no way that both my husband and I would have two totally separate topics we just talked about with our daughter show up in our feed unless our phones are eavesdropping.
Tips to get your phone to stop listening to you (maybe)
I can’t prove any of this, of course. I’m not an expert, and I don’t know the technical details of how it all works. I assume that, at some point, I probably agreed to some TL; DR Terms & Conditions that let certain apps or devices listen and use what they hear. Probably FaceTime itself. Whatever. Fine.
I did, however, come across some tips from bitdefender.com for minimizing this kind of thing that might actually help:
1. Check Privacy & Security settings for microphone permissions. I saw that I had given Facebook permission to use my microphone. (I’ve done Live videos on Facebook, so this makes sense.) Social media apps often need microphone access because you can’t create videos without giving it. Does that mean they’re listening all the time? Who knows. But turning off microphone permissions is one line of defense.
2. Turn off Background App Refresh. (Mine was off already.) Turning off this setting keeps apps from running in the background, potentially using their microphone permissions to listen when you’re not actively using the app.
3. Turn off voice-activated assistant apps like Siri or Google Assistant. (I had Siri voice activation turned off, but a new Apple Intelligence feature is on that ties to Siri. I haven’t even begun to look into that yet.) Theoretically, these tools only start actively listening when they hear “Hey Siri” or “Hey Google,” but I trust these companies about as far as I can throw them, so I’m not relying on that being the case.
Get me off this thing…no, wait
I know I’m not alone in this. We, the non-tech experts living life in the modern world, have found ourselves riding a carousel of technologies that we don’t have the time, energy, or ability to fully vet. It’s dizzying, but what can we do? Do we accept that privacy simply no longer exists? Fiddle with our settings and hope for the best? Kill our phones and live as Luddites?
The latter is appealing, to be honest. A phone-free life sounds downright magical some days. But then I remember how wonderful and genuinely incredible it is that we can FaceTime our daughter across the state…so we go around and around, hoping the cost to our privacy and sanity is worth it.
