I have been finding more and more videos being recommended on my homepage which I search about even though my privacy paths I follow seem good enough. So this is how it goes:

  • I come across a term I don’t know on a Lemmy post.
  • I open my browser, Cromite which has been set to priv.au, a searx instance, as the default search engine.
  • Search the word and don’t even open any links to know, just reading the meaning of this term out from the subtexts present on search results.
  • And then I open YouTube and scroll a bit on homepage to find a video on that term.

This has happened to me twice in past few days and I am not understanding which service of mine is giving it away. To add more about my setup, I’m on mobile btw, using FUTO keyboard and using Duckduckgo VPN which blocks cross-app tracking. My mobile lemmy client is Voyager. I don’t even interact with the post containing that term. I just open it up, read the post and the comments. No upvoting no commenting.

Who’s the culprit here?

  • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
    0·
    16 days ago

    I had something crazy like this happen recently. A friend of mine sent me a photo to my personal phone of an expensive liquor. The very next day on my work computer, on my work network, YouTube suggested a short video about the same expensive liquor that I had never looked anything up about previously.

    How the hell a photo from on device managed to track me like that was impressive. The algorithm is watching us.

        • icelimit@lemmy.ml
          0·
          16 days ago

          So YouTube/Google has somehow linked your personal phone activity to your YouTube at work even though work YouTube has no sign in?

          • tehn00bi@lemmy.world
            0·
            15 days ago

            It would appear so. Again, it was the most dramatic case of random coincidence or incredibly good association algorithm.

            This is the photo sent to me

            This is what YouTube suggested to me the very next day

            • icelimit@lemmy.ml
              0·
              15 days ago

              Perhaps you have a ‘leak’ in your isolation methods. Might also be happening to me but I so rarely use YouTube (signed in or otherwise) I can’t see m share relevant experiences.

    • rumba@lemmy.zipEnglish
      0·
      15 days ago

      My best guess would be your friend is being thoroughly tracked and they know who he semt the data to and they have a basic mapping of you.