Just a "heads-up"

You may have received the Swisscom blurb of 5th September including the article: Votre portable vous écoute-t-il?
…perhaps you were comforted by the text suggesting that it is technically feasible but doesn’t happen in practice.

Yesterday, a friend’s electric toothbrush packed up: the battery that originally lasted more than a week now doesn’t last long enough for a single use. Coincidentally, my own electric-toothbrush is also on its last legs: the soft-touch plastic part of the handle is disintegrating.

We discussed buying replacements.

24 hours later +/- minutes (sorry for not recording the exact conversation time), my friend received unsollicited e-mail from a purveyor of elecric toothbrushes!
Never heard of that brand before, but they are now permanently blocked from my network & mail.

Neither of us recall searching “toothbrush” on the internet for at least 6 months (and in any case we both use an anonymising-browser).

Reviewing my friend’s phone-settings, I saw that Whatsapp had invited itself to access the microphone whenever it feels like it. It would be mammoth effort to check if that application was in fact responsible, but I killed its mic access anyway.

Next time we meet we will include “buy rattlesnake” and “buy cat food” in our conversation…just for fun!

“…but doesn’t happen in practice.” Mmmmm!

Chris