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It's hard to trust Apple to keep their word on privacy when an "accidental" Siri activation potentially results in that recording (or related data) finding its way not just to Apple for, say, speech recognition, but all the way to advertisers.
Transparency would be appreciated here, Apple. Is there any ability for a user to review all recordings made and submitted to Siri? I want to say that Android has this ability via Google Takeout.
“The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden, Reuters noted (claims which remain disputed).”
It’s very common for users to associate their conversations with ads and believe that they are being listened to, across many platforms including those without microphones. The article does not appear to provide any non-anecdotal evidence of this.
How common is it for Apple to pay 8-figure settlements for spurious correlations?
It seems confirmed correct that yes siri does incorrectly activate, and anyone with an iphone knows this. What is unsubstantiated and denied by apple is that those siri recordings were used for advertising.
I was one of the people claiming this. I’ll tell you why I thought it.
1. I’m seeing ads for trending topics or those tied to things I’ve said or typed (targeted).
2. On one or two platforms, it was usually the same ads. Especially the targeted ones. They didn’t change often.
3. My friend and I discuss a rare topic.
4. Thirty minutes later, my app refreshes to show an ad on the rare topic from No. 3.
5. In each case, the only input for moving that information into a computer was my phone’s microphone.
6. Prior investigations showed some other devices, esp Alexa-style, were transmitting lots of data to their companies even when people weren’t talking to them. Their terms allowed their recordings to be used by the company, too.
So, we believed it was another example of a product listening in on us for money.
Edit to add:
Just minutes ago, Siri said she didn’t understand what we were saying. We never said “Hey Siri” or anything remotely like that. It keeps happening at least once a week. It’s clearly listening to some degree when it’s not supposed to. The only question is if there’s a recording of that.
Irrelevant unless you're offering some type of proof to the contrary
what about this line:
"Through the settlement, customers can not only get monetary relief but also ensure that their private phone calls are permanently deleted."
private phone calls??
I don't know how to reason about things like this and the Google's version with Street View recording wifi SSIDs. I wouldn't at all be surprised if these really were just harmless mistakes, but people feel so constantly surveilled that they immediately attribute suspicion/malice. Even this article is in scare quotes.
Wait, if Siri was “accidentally” activated to listen to our voices then does the led light up or not?
Our phones are definitely listening and serving ads based on what we say. I have personally experienced it. Most of us have if we are paying attention.
It seems like we don’t want to face this because the only remedy is to throw our phones off a cliff.
> I have personally experienced it.
They know who is in your proximity based on standard geolocation / ip techniques, and if someone in your vicinity searches for something then you will see ads based on that.
That’s why if you are talking about a movie or product you will see ads later - someone else in the group googled it.
Obviously we don’t know 100% but I don’t think what you experienced is what you think - I have yet to see hard evidence for it happening, at the OS level anyway. I’m sure a few apps might be doing it.
Try this as a test. Just choose an utterly random thing that has as little connection to anything in your life as possible. Then just start talking about that thing for a few minutes near your phone. Then never talk about it again.
Then tell me if you start to get ads for it. I think you will. I've seen it a few times.
One recent time, I was sitting with my wife and we were joking around and I was like "Why don't they have hamster wheels for cats?". We spoke about it for a minute or two and had a laugh. She swears she didn't google it and neither did I.
The next day we both got ads for this (apparently they exist).
I concede that it may have been a one off and there may be explanations.
If you are on Android there are ways to ditch Google altogether.
For instance, I am perfectly sure that my phone is not listening on me. Also, I see no ads whatsoever.
See:
- https://adaway.org (or similar)
LineageOS isn't about de-googling but device support and microg still has elevated amount of device privileges.
If you want to actual remove googles ability to spy, use grapheneos.org with optional sandboxed google play services that remove microphone and other permissions on the OS level.
> the only remedy is to throw our phones off a cliff.
This is ridiculous. There are plenty of things you can do. (like put it in the wood chipper)
I've argued ad nauseum with HN'ers that tech companies are actually listening to us, and about 95% of the time I get a response that such a thing would be a massive conspiracy theory, require too much throughput, and actually it's the search history they're keeping track of, yada yada.
Yet the technology is indeed entirely there, and while this settlement does not admit wrongdoing, it certainly doesn't detract from my point that they are actually listening to us and selling it to advertisers.
Meta got in trouble for reading private messages and using it for ad targeting a couple years ago.
> while this settlement does not admit wrongdoing
Settlements basically never admit wrongdoing, that is a big motivation to doing them. It is safe to assume that companies that are willing to settle are doing so because if they go to court they will be found guilty and the facts will be on record. To avoid that, companies pay money to make the problem go away. We should be calling these bribes, but the legal system calls them settlements.
Isn’t it also possible Apple doesn’t want other information out in discovery?
I agree, I was just anticipating "no wrongdoing" rebuttals
HN, being a gathering place of the engineers and types who actually do the work for systems like this, is heavily targetted for manipulation and influence by nation state and above actors to prevent too much truth in the narrative, which must be controlled from their perspective.
In this pursuit, consensus cracking is the most effective method based on how much it is the method used. (others are often at play, such as manual forum sliding)
I suspect this occurred to me multiple times over the last few years. I would seem to have ads on YouTube specifically related to vocal conversations I had with coworkers or family members, and far enough outside of my interests where the ads raised suspicion.
I was considering performing experiments to test if this was the case, but never got around to it. I wanted to be certain it wasn’t an instance of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon.
More to the point, this is an incredible breach of privacy. The amounts noted in the article are pathetically small for such an intrusion, especially over the period of 10 years for impacted users.
How the hell is this not the top post?!
Perhaps because the full title "to settle a lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations that were then shared with third parties and used for targeted ads" was too long.
The shortened title only suggests the data only sat around on Apple's servers (which, of course, would still be a bad thing).
I guess it's partly because this dropped during the new year's period when most tech folks are not near their screens. And also partially because of the "Apple brigade" making sure this doesn't go too far.
Really sad, I hope we get it back on the front page when most folks are back online, it helps paint a picture of what this company is really all about.
I ended up seeing this on /. and was surprised it wasn't still on the front page of HN anymore. Seems to have dropped off quickly.