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Comment by smaisidoro | Hacker News Reader

I have to say, I'm very sceptical about all of this, but one day a friend showed me a product (some speakers that use the table surface for resonance) and the ad showed a couple of minutes after on Facebook.

I started thinking on how devices can emit audio signatures for other devices around it to be aware of its presence. A couple of years after, Chromecast uses audio for authentication of nearby devices.

I honestly dismissed my paranoia all of these years with the argument that it would show in battery and data usage. But with offline language models, I'm not so sure anymore.

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One theory I have is that advertisers keep track of IP address. So if your friend searched for something on your internet, it would show ads to you.

I know this happens because a few years ago there was a discussion about how advertisements were leaking christmas present purchases through something like that.

But what's really creepy is the article claimed 24/7 speech recognition didn't drain battery too badly. And doesn't eat up data if it's over wifi.

Yes this definitely happens. I've had people on the same network as me getting Japanese YouTube ads just because I or someone else looked at a few Japanese videos.

Load balancers call this IP Persistence. It's one way of keeping users connected to the application server that has their session in memory. Except in this case, the session is ad info about the user.

I think this is the only model for Whatsapp. They know who is talking to who. They don't know what you are talking about but that doesn't matter when one or two persons in a group show some interest in a subject.

I had a weird experience some time ago. I stayed with my family at a hotel and our room had an unusually shaped tap in its bathroom. I never looked it up online - in fact, I didn't even mention to anyone that I thought that was a very peculiar tap. But a few days after we came back, Amazon showed me that exact tap as a shopping suggestion. It felt a little creepy. I could see no connection between the site where I booked the hotel room and Amazon, but there must be one somewhere.

Is it possible the manufacturer of the faucets actually partners with the hotel to market the faucets and they actually pay the hotel for the guest information to show them ads? I know some hotels I've stayed at actually advertise the fittings so it doesn't seem like a great stretch.

Still deeply creepy.

A previous or subsequent guest searched the tap online, and their search was associated with your account because it was from the same IP?

That actually makes a lot of sense. I think I used their wifi.

If you or your friend visited the webpage of the product and it had a Facebook Like button then Facebook would know that you or your friend were interested.

If it was your friend that visited the product webpage, then Facebook also knows that you are friends with him and also knows that you are both interested in similar things based on your browsing history and so it would show you the ad.

What you describe is certainly technically possible, but could not be secretly done by a major corporation because it would easily be caught and become a PR and legal disaster

Welcome to the wonderful world of targeted advertising part #2. This and more is old hat in present day ad tech. How about tying together which user is the same person on a tablet, phone and a PC? And it doesn't need any kind of audio signal.

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