I have heard something similar to this but just assumed it was a coincidence. Has this every been proven with verified results ?
My story is: 2 years ago I was looking for an apartment. My friend who is an agent took me to an apartment. After viewing I messaged him on what’s app saying I liked the place but I want the landlord to put latches on the windows so it’s child safe.
After messaging him I went to Facebook. Scrolling the timeline. A minute later I have adverts for window latches and window grills for child safety.
I didn’t search Google or anything. I was shocked.
On Android, I can spoof the microphone access permission so that Whatsapp thinks it has access. I can then log whenever this permission is being used while giving it spoofed data. I have it done this for many apps and unsurprisingly, most try to access the microphone in the background over and over again. I have not done this experiment with Whatsapp yet, though.
What I use for this is XPrivacyLua by M66B, which also has suppory for scriptable hooks in Lua.