I’ve spent thirty years in cybersecurity. I’m a veteran of thousands of live stages, warning wealth managers clients and CEOs about fraud, identity theft, and the dark corners of the internet. It takes a lot to rattle me. Frankly, I’ve seen it all.

But today, I got genuine chills. CHILLS!

It happened in the span of about sixty seconds, bridging two devices and 3 tech giants that aren’t supposed to talk to each other between my eBay messages, my 2 Apple devices, and my Gmail.

Here is the scenario: I was on my iPhone, using the secured eBay app. I was messaging a buyer and typed out a very specific, unique sentence. I typed exactly: “I figured they would end up in land locked Iowa or something!” (I sold two colossal lobster claws that I caught about 15 years back). This is my girls with the Dude. Long live His Dudeness.

I hit send, put down my phone, and spun around in my chair to my Mac. I opened up Gmail to write a completely unrelated email to a totally different person.

I typed the first four words: “I told the seller…”

And suddenly, there it was.

Ahead of my cursor, in ghostly gray text, in my Gmail on my Apple in my Mac again a totally different device the Google’s predictive text machine (from what I thought) offered to finish my thought: “…that I figured they would end up in land locked Iowa or something!”

I froze.

How the hell did that happen? HOW!!!! OMG! Do you see what just happened here?

My immediate reaction was the same as yours would be: Google is spying on me. How else could Gmail on a Mac possibly know what I just privately typed inside the eBay app on an iPhone? It feels like a violation. It feels like someone is standing directly over your shoulder, reading your private thoughts across platforms.

But as a security professional, I know that data doesn’t just teleport. It doesn’t magically jump from an isolated iPhone app into a Google browser session ON A MAC. There has to be a pipe connecting them.

I put on my forensic hat. I ruled out the easy stuff. I hadn’t copied and pasted the text. The clipboard wasn’t involved, no copy paste. Handoff is turned off on the iPhone. It doesn’t talk to any of my Mac devices. I checked my inbox—eBay hadn’t sent an email confirmation that Google could have scanned. There was no obvious digital trail. NOTHING!

So, I dug deeper. I had to find the invisible link between these two separate worlds. And what I found was a smoking gun that completely changed how I view device “intelligence.”

I was blaming the wrong suspect.

When I saw that gray predictive text in Gmail, cognitive bias kicked in and I of course assumed it was Google spying. But it wasn’t.

I was standing in Google’s house, but it was Apple’s ghost haunting the room.

Here is the simple truth of what happened:

When I typed that specific sentence about Iowa on my phone, “Predictive Text” was turned on in my iPhone settings. My iPhone keyboard didn’t just process the letters; it learned the pattern. It decided, “Hey, this is a unique phrase Robert is using. I’ll remember that to help him later.”

Because both my iPhone and my Mac are logged into the same iCloud account, my devices gossip with each other via Apples cloud, even though Apple’s “Handoff” is turned off. They are constantly synchronizing my habits for the sake of convenience.

The iPhone whispered that new “Iowa” sentence up to the iCloud, and iCloud immediately whispered it down to my Mac’s operating system in Gmail.

When I started typing “I told the seller…” in Chrome, it wasn’t Gmail offering the suggestion. It was my Mac’s own keyboard brain overlaying that ghostly gray text right inside of Gmail.

It was an optical illusion. It looked like corporate surveillance by Google, but it was actually ecosystem convenience by Apple, working exactly as designed—but working perhaps a little too well.

Why does this matter?

Because we constantly trade privacy for convenience without realizing the cost. We want our devices to “know” us so we can type faster. But we forget that “knowing us” means constant, invisible recording of our unique phrases and habits across every single screen we touch.

You weren’t hacked. No one was “listening” in the traditional, nefarious sense. Your own keyboard, Apple, was just being overly helpful, and your devices were gossiping behind your back.

We live in a world where our digital ecosystem is often faster than our own thoughts. If you want to exorcise that particular ghost, you have to go into your iPhone settings and hit “Reset Keyboard Dictionary” and turn off predictive text by going to “General” and Keyboards in your iPhone or your Mac. Or both.

Honestly, as upset as I was, I’m OK with it. Just a little freaked out about it. I will say, though, if you are up to no good, and sharing devices with family or coworkers, between Apples ecosystem and Google’s ecosystem, the truth will come out through Apple and Google’s being helpful and your words in the form of predictive text being used against you.

The Security Takeaway “Privacy vs. Convenience.”

• The Myth: “Apps are listening to me.”
• The Reality: “My devices are gossiping with each other.”

Until then, remember: if you type it on one screen, assume every other screen you own knows about it seconds later.

Robert Siciliano CSP, CSI, CITRMS is a security expert and private investigator with 30+ years experience, #1 Best Selling Amazon author of 5 books, and the architect of the CSI Protection certification; a Cyber Social Identity and Personal Protection security awareness training program. He is a frequent speaker and media commentator, and CEO of Safr.Me and Head Trainer at ProtectNowLLC.com