Ads popping up for the same thing I was talking about minutes ago? [closed]

Question

How is it possible that whenever I see or talk about a certain topic to my friends, after few minutes that topic is showing as sponsored ad on Facebook.

I can relate two such incidents. One was I was discussing about whiskey (JD) to be specific, and after 5 minutes I was checking my Facebook news feed and this advert about Jack Daniels pops up on my news feed.

Other one was we were planning a trip to Greece and discussion about Greece, and minutes later, all of us had sponsored ad on our Facebook news feed.

I mean this is creepy yet fascinating at the same time.

My question is, how is this possible and is there anyway to disable it? Thanks

Answer 1

Yes it is expected behaviour if you were near devices that use Siri, Alexa or Ok Google type connections. These send data continually back for analysis, and if you read the Terms and Conditions, they explicitly state that the data will be used to tailor all sorts of things, including advertising.

The simple ways to stop this include disabling those apps, disconnecting microphones and firewalling communications.

We have a few posts that go into detail on this over on Security Stack Exchange — please come on over.