“Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t after you,” Joseph Heller wrote in Catch-22. He could very easily have been writing about the internet. We all have stories about an innocuous conversation with a stranger on the subway about buying a new duvet only to have every single Facebook ad become tiny targeted commercials pitching the greatest duvet on the internet. While Facebook adamantly denies listening to people’s conversations, that doesn’t mean they can’t hear what you’re saying through more non-deliberate passive ways. Reply All, the tech podcast, tried to get to the bottom of it and determined that Facebook doesn’t need to eavesdrop on your conversations because they already know everything about you, including where you’ve been, what you’ve been doing, and who you were doing it with. Now, a Vice reporter decided to give it a whirl.
