You know the situation. You're talking to your friend about, say, how a trip to Thailand is on your bucket list. Next thing you know, you're seeing ads for flights to the Far East showing up in your social media feed or Google searches.
If definitely feels like your phone is listening to you but Mark Zuckerberg has insisted that's a conspiracy theory and it's definitely not the case.
Perhaps it comes from speculation that security agencies like America's NSA can turn your phone into a hot mic and listen to your conversations. Edward Snowden blew the whistle on the tapping of phones of world leaders and the mass surveillance of ordinary citizens. But the head of Facebook is officially denying the tech giant uses your voice to retarget ads at you.
He's been appearing before a US Senate hearing Washington DC to answer questions about privacy and the Cambridge Analytica scandal.
The British firm harvested the Facebook profiles of tens of millions of users, including up to 45,000 in Ireland, in a bid to sway voting in the Brexit referendum and the US presidential election.
Democratic Senator Gary Peters asked Zuckerberg "does Facebook use audio obtained from mobile devices to enrich personal information about its users."
The Facebook replied with a firm no, and said "you're talking about the conspiracy theory that gets passed around that we listen to what's going on in your microphone and then use it for ads. We don't do that."
