Is your phone eavesdropping on you?

NEW YORK (FOX5NY) - If you ever feel like your phone is spying on you, you're not alone. On the streets of Flatiron, everyone we stopped had a different story.

"Been mentioning that I want a blue velvet couch, suddenly all the ads I get on my Instagram, on my Facebook are blue velvet couches," said Garrett Keefe from Brooklyn.

"I was in a car with a friend and the radio was playing a song and we were fighting over who sang the song, and it was a long name of a song," said Ryane Hecker of Manhattan. "I typed in like an article like 'the' and it pulled up the whole name of the song."

These weird instances happen often to many people. So is your phone picking up your conversations, even when you're not using it? Paul Wagenseil, the senior editor of security for Tom's Guide and Laptop, says no. He also has a response to those two scenarios.

"Because he's logged into Google on his laptop, searched for 'blue velvet couches.' Then he's logged into Google on his phone so he starts typing in 'blue' and it auto-completes 'velvet couches,'" Wagenseil said. "That's normal. That's the way it's supposed to work."

In simple terms, your phone isn't picking up on your conversations, but apps like Google and Facebook are tracking what you've searched for. Then they store that information. As for the song that came on the radio for Ryane, Wagenseil said apps don't pick up conversations, but they do pick up music.

"They make a fingerprint of it digitally so when that song gets played on the radio they can identify it right away," Wagenseil said. "It already knows what the music is because it recognizes the digital signature. It doesn't actively go in and transcribe what you're saying."

Wagenseil's biggest piece of advice is to always keep the Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS turned off on your phone. This way apps won't be able to track your movements and location.