What the Tech: Are Your Phone and Social Media Apps Listening to Your Conversations? How advertisers learn what interests youMeta says it does not use the microphones on smartphones to secretly listen to conversations for advertising purposes. Your friends may be influencing your advertisementsImagine a friend sitting across from you recently searched online for a particular hat. Apps and websites can still use browsing activity, searches, purchases and other data to decide which advertisements to show. The bottom lineYour phone probably is not secretly recording your conversations to choose advertisements.