GPS?
Here’s one for you, tried and proven. Year or more back, I had to get a new phone. I used a back up to restore all the phone apps.
I started getting FB friend suggestions for some people I didnt know. A few days of this and I figured out they were all people who worked at a place I was going to for lunch. I disabled all location services and it’s never happened since.
IT people, especially programmers, are not the most honest I’ve found. They often can get to data they shouldn’t be screwing around with. I wouldn’t doubt FB had some program that looked at location, people who were associated with that location, and then triggered a FB suggestion.
I'm not buying it.
The area is at the Southpark Mall, where every major retail establishment you can think of is sitting in the same vicinity. We didn't stop at Crate and Barrel, even for a moment. We simply drove by and had that brief conversation.
If it was GPS, why that particular store and not, say, the other 177 stores at the mall (in the same parking lot) or the several hundred other surrounding stores within the same few square block area?
I've heard many theories how this would be possible, but Occam's razor should reign. I'm not saying there's some dweeb at the other end of the phone listening it, but it's obvious Facebook as built voice algorithms and are surreptitiously using the phone's technology to listen in for phrases and terms, and yes, these algorithms utilize GPS to fine tune what they hear.
This is not exactly unheard of. My son has been forbidden to wear a Huawei smart watch at his aerospace job because authorities are convinced it's doing exactly what it seems Facebook is doing.