So I am recently looking up the options to buy a new EV and, clearly, I’ve been discussing it with my family and close friends.
There was one constant tho, anytime we ended up discussing it, THEIR phones would light up with a plethora of Car adverts.
This has made my mother snap, she has told me she wants to buy the same phone as mine and I’ve finally been able to discuss with her other ways these devices are made to work for the manufacturer, not their buyers.
So far so good! I personally can’t wait to setup the GrapheneOS phone for her.
I’m glad for the switch. Buuuut it doesn’t work like that.
You search cars heavily. You and your Mum have FB/social media. You have Bluetooth or location or WiFi on. Social knows your hanging out and likely to discuss cars. It shows them ads.
A tech podcast did a dive into this. It even works if your partner and mum arnt connected on social media. Imagine your Mum lives interstate. Mum searches plane tickets and is coming in a month, during the time she searches perfumes but doesn’t buy. A few days before arrival your partner gets perfume ads from a place nearby. When mum lands she talks about getting perfume. Partner has been primed where to go.
Its insidious. Graphine will help a little but if you use the internet there is still tracking.
My phone carrier requires an app to change plans. I installed it in a separate profile then the next day got ads for it in FB.
The only relatively safe way to avoid it is to not use any app unless it’s from f-droid or similar places, to use a degoogled phone, to use an adblocker for all websites, to use an end-to-end messenger for private conversations and not social media, to use federated non-profit social media if you ever use any at all, to use a paid email provider that doesn’t make money of your data as primary income, and to use an actually private web search (not Bing, not Google).
It’s a shame that it requires so much knowledge and effort for a bare minimum of privacy.