So I've got this car insurance app which I have to record trips with to get bo uspoints and giftcards. This app is usually inactive untill I turn on my GPS and bluetooth but it so happens that whenever I'm driving I get a notification to turn my GPS and bleutooth on if I want to record like this app knows when I'm driving and didn't turn it on
My best friend and I were texting about this obscure kind of cat food she had to order online for her special needs kitty. I didn't look it up online. I didn't Google it. Nothing. We just talked about it and how hard it was to find and how expensive it is, but that's it's worth it because she adores her cat. After we dropped the topic later, I went on to FunSubstance and I had an advertisement for the exact same type of cat food we talked about. I was actually a little frightened. I just closed out of Safari and turned off my phone. Freaky as fuck.
Anything on electronics is safe to assume gonna be public information for anyone that makes a query to either the device or anything it connects to like google ad services or apple services.
Even if your location is off, if you're using a web browser and are connected to a wifi network, the network's IP address can still be used by websites to get your location (or at least the location of the network, which is going to be pretty much within a street's width of your location)
Since this seems to surprise some of you, here some facts:
1. Your phone is giving you weather details for the last known position
2. Even with yuour GPS off, your position can be found by triangular positioning (not as exact though)
3. Google has access to the microphone of your phone. And it's using it. Permanently. Try saying e.g. "Malcolm in the middle" a couple of times with your phone around, then Google it. Google will very likely auto-complete your search to Malcolm in the middle after the first three letters.
1. Your phone is giving you weather details for the last known position
2. Even with yuour GPS off, your position can be found by triangular positioning (not as exact though)
3. Google has access to the microphone of your phone. And it's using it. Permanently. Try saying e.g. "Malcolm in the middle" a couple of times with your phone around, then Google it. Google will very likely auto-complete your search to Malcolm in the middle after the first three letters.