How often does Siri listen to you? It’s not only when you ask her questions. Siri, and Apple employees, can listen in at any time. “A small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation. User requests are not associated with the user’s Apple ID. Siri responses are analysed in secure facilities and all reviewers are under the obligation to adhere to Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements,” Apple claims when speaking to the Guardian. Apparently, less than 1% of Siri conversations are used for Apple’s grading purposes. However, the Guardian claims that “Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals, and recordings of couples having sex.” Apple claims that they only listen into conversations when Siri is activated. However, with Apple’s fairly new “Hey Siri” feature, it happens more often on accident. Personally, I turned off the “Hey Siri” feature on my iPhone because there were many times where I would be having regular conversations or watching TV when my iPhone thought it heard the words “Hey Siri” and Siri would start talking to me. I found it annoying and that was why I turned it off, it never crossed my mind that Apple could and maybe was listening in at those moments.
After word of this got out, Apple apologized for their actions in August of 2019. They said that will make changes to their grading program so that Apple users have more control over how Siri goes about taking care of their requests and questions. I find this to be a major invasion of privacy. Even though there is no current reason for suspicion of Apple using any of this information they heard or selling it to a third party, no one wants their personal information to be heard by a complete stranger. Although Apple has said they will no longer randomly listen in on conversations not involving Siri, the fact that they have the ability to do so is reason for concern. Mainly because if Apple can do it, could it be hacked? Could criminals or governments listen into conversations or collect other information through the iPhone or other Apple products? That is the part I find scary. Apple employees probably don’t care very much, if at all, about our personal lives, but other people might.
Is or was Apple listening in on our conversation to sell our information to criminals and governments? I highly doubt it. But privacy is always a reason for concern. We place our trust in our devices and the companies who produce them, they should protect our privacy at all costs because it is simply the right thing to do.
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