Is Facebook secretly spying on our conversations?

For years, there have been rumours that Facebook eavesdrops to what its users’ converse.

Kelli Burns, a communications professor at the University of South Florida, teamed up with NBC — a US-based news organisation — to look into whether the rumours are true.

It is widely rumoured that Facebook spy on its users’ conversations to serve advertisers. To experiment it, Burns turned on the microphone service on her phone and shared her desire to go to a safari.

“I'm really interested in going on an African safari,” she said directly into the handset, as quoted by IBT. “I think it'd be wonderful to ride in one of those jeeps.”

Less than a minute later, according to NBC, one of the most prominent ad-based posts on her Facebook feed was centred on a safari trip. Later, a jeep advertisement also reportedly appeared on the feed.

Burns remained sceptical about the social networking site to be constantly listening to users, but termed it “increasingly concerning how much personal data the platform can access”.

“I don't think that people realise how much Facebook is tracking every move we're making online,” she told NBC. “Anything that you're doing on your phone, Facebook is watching.”

Facebook, however, has denied rumours that it spy on its users’ conversations.  “No, we don't record your conversations,” the company says on its help page.

“If you choose to turn on this feature, we'll only use your microphone to identify the things you're listening to or watching based on the music and TV matches we're able to identify. If this feature is turned on, it's only active when you're writing a status update.”

— File photo by Reuters