I normally have GPS and Bluetooth disabled, so my position would have to be guessed based on cell towers. We were not even on the same WLAN (because the WLAN was down in the vacation home, much to our dissatisfaction).

While I can’t rule out somebody in our group stealthily googling the tablets, phones while playing is generally frowned upon.

So yeah, being on the same cell tower as someone I know who might have searched for it might be the only other explanation.

The adventure itself didn’t have anything to do with the tablets, that was just our group doing strange stuff, like always.

No, I am not a AI fanboy. I just compared bad to worse.

Of course users get something from their smartphones, but not from the spyware on it. The spyware is not an integral function of a smartphone.

Just think about the scale of the surveillance: every smartphone user is being monitored 24/7 in hope to find something to sell them.

If you hate AI because it wastes so much energy, think about the cost for the this: Energy, water, battery life, bandwidth, … And in contrast to AI the ‘users’ don’t get anything in return.

Okay, so here is my story:

I was on holiday with my friends and we were playing a TTRPG. In the RPG our group needed charol tablets. I have never in my life googled or needed something like that.

After the session, I opened up Amazon to buy something I forget to pack and voilà: Amazon suggested me to buy charol tablets.

My smartphone must have listened in and given that data to Amazon.

No Alexa or similar products were in the vacation home.

Aren’t they dangerous?