Most likely the website you pirated your movies from stored cookies in your browser which then were picked up by Google/YouTube.

No, they don't: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtfU9AsUmc4

Again, no, they don't: https://gizmodo.com/these-academics-spent-the-last-year-testing-whether-you-1826961188

If you don't trust a 4 minute YouTube video or an independent (?) study, try a Reddit comment: https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/q1u71q/comment/hfhynid/

Yet again, someone mistakes an anecdote for evidence. And evidence is also not the plural form of anecdote.

I'm sure we have people here who are tech-savvy enough to have actually examined the kinds of data that their phone is sharing.

If you have something like Google Home or Amazon Alexa, then yeah, those would be sending voice data back, and yeah, they could probably use it for advertising. But as far as I know, there is no evidence that phones are "always listening" and "always sending information back" when they're idle.

This may be a simple coincidence. Maybe you had similar YouTube suggestions in the past but you didn't pay attention because they come at random times. Like if you drive a Honda Civic, you tend to spot all the Honda Civic in the street.

There would be an interesting experiment to make though:

1. Take a snapshot of your YouTube recommandations
2. Choose a subject that has nothing to do with any of the recommandations, let's say "travel to the Bahamas"
3. Hold a conversation with someone with both your phone's present, mention several time going to the Bahamas.
4. Check YouTube again, si if the topic of Bahamas is appearing.
5. Choose another topic not covered by your recommendations, let's say collecting stamps
6. Put your phones away, have a conversation about collecting stamps
7. Check YouTube recommandations

Person in a privacy community using YouTube and multiple Google accounts thinks the only way they are being tracked is through phone microphones...you can't make this shit up.

No, your phone doesn't listen to you 24/7. With that out of the way, there are a number of places where youtube may have gotten that info. One possibility is that someone in your household looked up the movie and maybe checked if stuff ripped from netflix is indeed full HD. And since everyone in your family is using the same NAT IP, then it's easy for youtube to target recommendations at everyone in that household.

First off, if you're concerned about phone privacy, consider a custom OS for your phone that respects privacy such as GrapheneOS.

It's easy to figure out that your device isn't listening to a constant audio stream 24/7, since that would drain battery and send a lot of noticeable data over the network. However, it is entirely possible to listen for certain keywords as you mentioned, and send them encrypted with another seemingly legitimate packet. There's no way to be 100% certain, but it is possible in theory without draining too much battery.

The steps you took are good, making sure that apps don't have any permissions they don't need. Privacy is a spectrum, so it's not "all or nothing". As I mentioned before, if you're seriously concerned about mobile privacy and want a solution, you can get a custom operating system that can remove any privacy invasive elements. GrapheneOS also allows you to disable the camera and microphone system-wide (although this functionality is present on some other Android builds).

If it eases you any, a lot of these advertisements happen to be coincidence and trigger confirmation bias. It could be that those ads happened to show up by coincidence, or that advertisers managed predicted your interests, or that you got tracked by some other means while downloading the movie. The possibilities are nearly endless.

Listening to audio would be the least effective and most expensive method of data collection for advertisers. It's not happening. They already have literally over a million data points on you, there's nothing useful for them to glean from your audio that they don't already have ad nauseum.

You see thousands of ads and recommendations every day. You finally found one that was relevant to you. It's not that deep.

The youtube algorithm determined the following: people who watch the kind of videos in your history, are also interested in recording netflix shows. And it was right, because you are in fact interested in that (general) topic. This is another possible explanation.

It's possible that it's inferred off the digital footprint of you pirating the content, also. People freak out a lot about being listened to, but I'd argue that's an inefficient spying mechanism they probably don't lean heavily on if they can avoid it. We're all living on platforms that are knowably spying on everything you click on or read or do online and feeding that into giant AI models with everything about you. Like just by watching a pirated video on a Google TV device, Google's hashing that and phoning that data home, possibly even matching that to the specific file, and adding that to an ad profile.

I’ve gotten ads for things I’ve just thought about. Never said anything out loud about or did any searches related to. It was something in a video I’ve watched dozens of videos about in the past. But on this occasion, I happened to think that I kind of want one for the first time. And I just so happened to start getting ads for them right after, also for the first time. They know way more about you than you think and don’t need to listen to you.

• A family member might have searched it
• An ad network might have reported on your piracy (especially now with privacy sandbox)
• Your media player might just be doing some tracking and/or insecure searching for metadata
• Siri or something might have popped open
• You googled to get to the piracy website
• You may have just looked up the movie, and the movie was popular with pirates

Don't get too paranoid

And how often. have you said stuff that you have not received advertising for? You will notice it when you get a positive match but not on a negative.

Data collecting companies can predict/rate your behavior for more then 20 years based. Since then. it has been perfected. They know that you are interested in those topics without having the need to waste resources on recording and analyzing every single audio stream.

Reporter: [REDACTED]
Reason: BS

Maybe I should have removed this post, because it is ridiculous.

In addition to all the GrapheneOS recommendations, there are also faraday bags. Drop the phone in while at home or wherever.

Here’s a fun little experiment you can try. Make a list of random topics and have a discussion about each of them on separate days. Make sure each topic is something that could result in creepy suggestions or ads on YT. If even one of these topics produces the expected result, you could be on to something.

I'll second the recommendation for GrapheneOS. One of the available options I use is to keep mic, camera, and location off at all times until I need them. That simple toggle ability changes your privacy stance greatly.