Interesting. Did you pay with a credit card? (Since Covid I will not handle money. Even if I go into a Dollar Tree and spend 1 dollar I pay with a credit card. And please nobody say I am paying interest on a dollar. I pay to $0 as soon as things post and don't see interest charges.) Step 2 is to shut off your phone before you get to the store and leave it off. Buy a Hershey bar (with almonds!) this time but never say Hershey even after you turn the phone back on. I see this claim A LOT but nobody will ever test the theory, and I have never had this happen to me. I mean, logic would say that if you drive through Arby's and get curly fries your phone would hear you order them. so this would happen for every product you mention when you have your phone with you. Alexa and Echo devices keep your commands in a file but A) you can erase them at the end of every day and B) do you really think it is intrusive that some ear in the sky knows you turned your lights on or off? I don't understand the outrage people have about this kind of thing. I always dismiss it as either people who don't understand technology and the internet, or are just mad and want to have something to complain about.

SO much of this is about perspective. Let's just say you are out on a search and rescue event. You have a heart attack and fall into a ravine or something extreme like that. In that circumstance I WANT my phone's location services to allow someone to track my location. (Just FYI the location services on my phone are OFF just because it saves one drib and 2 drabs of power.)

So I'd be really interested in investigating what caused the ear in the sky to know about your Heath bars. Because to further apply logic, if you sit and watch TV with your phone nearby, logic says that if your phone is listening you should get email from every company that advertises. And that may be the case. I don't know. I can only say that in my observation it is not that extreme. If the world knows to send you ads because you paid with a credit card, that's a whole new hallway to travel down.

I love puzzles like this!

I am using the new 1040XTRAEZ form this year. It has just 2 lines.

1. How much did you make in 2023?
2. Send it to us.