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I was speaking to my insurance agent yesterday afternoon taking care of some life insurance changes, and my agent congratulated me on my recent wedding (July) and inquired about my upcoming honeymoon to Rome. After the call ended, within a few minutes, I get the following push notification from an app I have on my phone:

enter image description here

I thought that was pretty creepy, and a few others have mentioned that they think the application had access to the phone conversation I just had, but as a mobile developer myself I find this extremely unlikely, if not impossible, that this is the case, but I would be interested in knowing what could perhaps be some reasonable explanations. (I've tried contacting theChive, but no response yet.)

I'll lay out the relevant facts below:

  • I have theChive, a photo sharing/entertainment app installed on my iPhone.
  • At some point I may have shared something from the app to Facebook, giving them some amount of permissions over my Facebook account.
  • I likely posted/commented something on Facebook within the last month or two about my honeymoon plans to Rome.
  • I haven't been on the app in quite a while, probably a few months.

Can anyone think of something more reasonable than "they tapped my phone", and/or think of any other possibilities perhaps other than the Facebook/phone call coincidence angle?

Mike
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  • As I've never developed for iOS, I can't comment for the platform, but Android includes the `RECORD_AUDIO` permission, and the audio sources it can record from includes the audio of a phone call. Recording a call on Android is certainly possible: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/8296539/call-recording-processing-service-android I don't think it's a leap to assume iOS has similar capability. – Brian S Sep 05 '14 at 15:16
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    IF it has access to Facebook, and you wrote about honeymoon, rome, etc., it might process that information and send you messages about it. – woliveirajr Sep 05 '14 at 15:17
  • According to the [FAQ](http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/faq#questions), Skeptics.SE is for researching the evidence behind the claims you *hear or read*. This question appears to be *your own* speculation, and is off-topic. Please edit it to reference a claim that other people are making and flag for moderator attention to re-open (or get 5 re-open votes). – Oddthinking Sep 05 '14 at 15:49
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    FWIW, there is no public API that allows either monitoring a phone call or audio recording while the device is locked. HOWEVER, the operating system does now have some sort of always-on audio monitor ("Hey Siri..."), so it's *conceivable* that could be a route forward (although Apple scans for the use of private APIs during App Store submission). And the NSA leaks confirmed that iPhones can be pwned by powerful-enough agencies with physical access. But I'd suggest much more likely are data-mining analytics (location, social media posts, etc.) – Larry OBrien Sep 05 '14 at 17:38

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