#10

@BodyInTheThames mentioned he thought he’d experienced this before.

Considering how bad my voice recognising gadgets are even when I’m deliberately speaking to them, I’m sort of sceptical of the kind of thing you mention, but I guess it’s possible - is there no chance that the term doesn’t appear somewhere in your emails or Drive or anything that it could be picking it up from?

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#11

And when you say it was there as a potential search term - do you mean it appeared as an autofill when you started typing something in?

#12

I wondered that, but the name of the client isn’t common knowledge yet beyond literally a chat, so I can’t see how?

It came up as a recommended search in the Google app, along with two things I’d searched for on Twitter in previous day’s.

#13

Yep: Who here has an iPhone? Is it listening to your conversations?

Ordinarily this is coincidence. The processing power required to listen to conversations, analyse it, and send it to a central company would knacker a battery. What’s likely to happen here is that Android has seen the client phrase elsewhere (in an email you’ve received before opening the Google app, maybe?) and picked that up as what you’re likely to search for next.

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#15

Had something similar few days ago when discussing a reporter and their column with friends, then one guy started getting some targeted ads about them. He says he has never read them. He started saying Google was listening as well…maybe he was right…

#16

This is definitely possible, but it’s also massively complex just to generate a suggested search. The phone’s picking up the term from somewhere, but it’s probably something relatively simple.

#17
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#18

I’d get that if it was my work phone, but it was my personal one. Don’t have my work email on here.

Anyhow, I hope it’s just a freak coincidence.

#19

I get adverts for Christian single ladies wanting to date so no one is listening to me at all.

Although, yesterday my boyfriend used a curse word and the Amazon Echo thing came to life and said, “That’s not very nice.”

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#20

Wrap your whole head in tin foil and swallow your sim card.

HTH

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#21

you ask it enough questions, maybe it just wants to get to know you better

#23

Perhaps relevant twitter thread

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#25

That would mean smartphones would have shit battery life… :face_with_raised_eyebrow:… :thinking:… :astonished:

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#26

Of course they are, otherwise how would they know when you say, “OK Google”?

#27

Just a coincidence think of all the times it doesn’t happen

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#28

alright Kasabian

#29

This isn’t creepy at all, Google Calendar literally asks you if you want it to read information from your emails. He probably just clicked OK without reading it.

#30

Apple swear blind that they’re not, but iOS has had the ability to do Speech Recognition for ages. It’s not happened to me personally, but so many people have mentioned it that it can’t just be coincidence.

#31

By buying an Echo you have pretty much asked Amazon to bug you…

#32

Your phone (if you’ve got the feature switched on) is listening for those specific keywords and supposedly ignores everything it hears before it hears that.

Obviously whether it’s actually doing that or not is another matter… how much do you trust Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft et all.