Ad about ’15,932 food pics in your gallery’ makes some S’poreans wonder if Grab has access to their phone gallery

SINGAPORE: A recent advertisement from Grab appears to be having the opposite effect of what the company wanted, at least for some Reddit users.

On Wednesday, posts on r/Singapore and r/Singaporehappenings concerned an ad from Grab that reads, “15,932 food pics in your gallery. You’ve been hungry. Share them on our new Discover page, and see what others are eating too!”

The wording of the ad gave rise to suspicions that Grab might have access to their phone galleries.

“Grab aware of my gallery photos? This is certainly quite alarming, isn’t it? While I’m certain they’re not actually looking into my gallery and have the ability to identify food photos, this kind of notification just spreads fear that apps have been spying on us,” wrote one post author.

The other asked, “How does Grab know how many food photos I have in my personal gallery?” adding that it “looks like a blatant admission that the app is scanning your phone’s image data or metadata—without users ever being clearly informed or consenting to this.”

They went on to express concerns over data privacy, fearing that it may be “an invasion of a private digital space that most of us reasonably expect to be off-limits.”

Other Reddit users said that they had received the same ad, however, with the exact same number, which meant that it had been a randomly chosen one, rather than a number that reflected the actual number of food photos taken by the post author.

“Probably just a random ad copy. Maybe not the best thought-out one though, due to reactions like yours,” a Reddit user wrote.

When a commenter explained that this is an example of a marketing strategy called specificity, with 15,932 being “more convincing and believable than 16,000,” another chimed in to say that “it’s the kind of ad that will make me wanna uninstall the app.”

“Just received it as well, can confirm it’s a random number because it’s the exact same one I received, and I checked my photo gallery – don’t have so many photos. No idea why they thought this a good idea given privacy concerns, but eh,” another wrote.

“Do yourself a favour and disable push notifications for Grab,” one advised, saying that they receive more marketing notifications than useful ones.

“If it is a marketing strategy from Grab, it’s poor taste. Personal data is not a laughing matter. There has been a huge amount of scams from personal data theft. Not many people would appreciate this,” a Reddit user chimed in. /TISG

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