Your phone is spying? The truth behind the strange phenomenon
By: Hollie McKay
Link to article referenced: https://fxn.ws/2WrrgNW
One of our SMEs was contacted by a long-time friend concerning his daughter’s recent experience with this topic. His daughter works for a large corporation, so the concerns that arose in her mind were of import. While this is anecdotal, it does contradict some of the explanations in the article. In order to protect identities and the corporation, we will call the daughter Beth, here is the story as related to our SME and you decide for yourself as to the truth of the matter and what your own security concerns should be.
Beth regularly got together with a group of her girlfriends to catch up and hang out. This particular get-together was for one of the friends who was getting ready to have a baby. As was their custom, they all gathered at the house of one friend and everybody placed their cellphones on a table and they all went into a nearby area of the house; the rule was no distractions during the get-togethers. After a few hours, they all prepared to leave and went to pick up their phones. All of the young ladies had notifications on their phones, primarily from social media apps and such, concerning baby stuff. Needless to say, this kind of freaked them out a bit having heard about this “phenomena.” Beth decided to put it to a test.
They all placed their phones back on the table and decided to go back into the nearby area and talk about a topic none of them would every have conversations with; hunting. After about an hour, they all came back and looked at their phones. All had notifications about hunting products.
Now, this raised concerns in Beth’s mind. The next day she went to her boss and described the event. All of the employees in her division at work had company issued cellphones. The company rule was no personal business on the devices. However, they all did have social media apps for their professional profiles and work. They tested it out in the office. Sure enough, notifications for products relating to the topics they were just discussing. The topic they choose was something unrelated to work. Interesting. Beth went to their IT security department, who had no answers for her or her boss. So, Beth decided to go to her dad knowing of his friendship with our SME.