I hear stories like this a lot in the context of "Facebook is listening to my conversations through my phone microphone"
I think more likely is that we forget how many ads we're exposed to in a day. The odds of occasional eerie coincidences is high.
I think more likely is that we forget how many ads we're exposed to in a day. The odds of occasional eerie coincidences is high.
But one thing people often overlook with hyper-local geo ads are bluetooth beacons which are tracked at most major retailers these days. Doesn't help that Apple trying to help people use wireless headphones now likes to turn bluetooth on every day (the lock screen bluetooth button defaults to 'off until tomorrow')
unpaired bluetooth and unconnected wifi are gold for anyone wanting to track you around a space.
researchers found that "the overwhelming majority of
Android devices are not implementing the available
randomization capabilities built into the Android OS,"
which makes such Android devices trivial to track.
[...]
Apple, meanwhile, introduced MAC address randomization in
iOS 8, only to break it in iOS 10. [...] its network probe
broadcasts to include a distinct Information Element (IE),
data added to Wi-Fi management frames to extend the Wi-Fi
protocol.
four scholars from the US Naval Academy say they've
managed to track 100% of all test smartphones, despite
the devices using randomized MAC addresses.
[...]
The novelty in our method is that we are sending RTS
frames to IEEE 802.11 client devices, not APs, to
extract a CTS response message which we derive the true
global MAC address of that device.