Infographic: Cell phone spied on? | additional

Have you ever been talking to someone about a product or service and then, moments later, noticed an advertisement for it on your smartphone? According to a survey he conducted NordVPN About a third of the more than 10,000 people surveyed in eleven participating countries.

Most of the respondents had this experience with their smartphones (65 percent). 62 percent noticed this phenomenon when using their computers, and 27 percent on their tablets. About a third of survey respondents feel their devices are being monitored and bugged because of these “coincidences” — eight percent even said it scared them.

However, accurate advertising cannot be achieved by direct eavesdropping in the narrow sense, but rather by communication between different devices. The so-called cross-device (ultrasonic) tracking (uXDT) refers to the acquisition of high-frequency audio signals from various devices used at the same time, among other things for economic evaluation.

Therefore, our smartphones are more likely to listen to other electronic devices such as TVs, game consoles, or cell phones than they do to us. This is also the reason why many applications that do not appear to require direct microphone use require approval. These signals can also be integrated into television advertising or, for example, played in the sales areas of supermarkets and thus popularized.