Dear HIW, How does the technology work to personalise the adverts you see on your phone? Sometimes I speak about something and don’t search for it on my phone, but I still receive adverts for a specific product. Is there a way to stop this?

Mel Farrance

Keywords in internet searches can trigger personalised adverts

It can be quite unnerving to come across targeted adverts and, like yourself, it often leaves people wondering how your phone gets hold of this information. Personalised adverts can be useful, as you are more likely to be interested in the products being presented to you. For this to happen, technology companies such as Google will collect data from internet searches, the types of sites you’ve visited, the location of the of your device and activity from downloaded applications.

Your phone also has the ability to listen to its surroundings for virtual assistants such as Siri to work. However, many platforms, such as Facebook, state that they don’t allow companies to advertise on their sites using microphone-collected information. While today’s technology doe s enable devices to be able to record and understand speech, this shouldn’t be used without your consent. To avoid personalised adverts from appearing, you can take extra care to read the privacy terms. For example, whenever you enter a website or application and receive a notification with ‘accept’ or ‘refuse’, you should make sure you know what you are agreeing to. Sometimes this is in the form of a checkbox list that can help you reduce the methods used for targeted advertising.