Apple Can't Get Out of Siri Privacy Lawsuit, Says Judge

[zakarhino]

While the usual tirade of critics claim this is long overdue?

Critiquing companies is actually a good thing when dealing with a supposed 'free market.' Every consumer should get into the habit of doing that. They serve us, not the other way around. A "usual tirade of critics" of a business is a sign of a healthy consumer mindset that isn't blinded by sapping up marketing comments as gospel.

Defending them out of a false sense of loyalty is not a good thing, and we should shun people that idolize companies like it's some sort of fandom. Keeping companies in check and ensuring they serve our best interests is the responsibility of the consumer. No pushback = they take more and more steps towards looking out for their best interests over ours.

I would choose a "usual tirade of critics" any day over a "usual tirade of apologists."

 

[DougieS]

I did not kew Apple was selling our information to advertisers like Google and Facebook are.

From the article

That is not how Siri works and there has been no evidence that Apple has ever provided Siri recordings to advertisers.

Article Link: Apple Can't Get Out of Siri Privacy Lawsuit, Says Judge

 

[Amazing Iceman]

One user in the lawsuit claimed that his private discussions with his doctor about a "brand name surgical treatment" caused him to receive targeted ads for that treatment, while others said that their discussions about Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses, and Olive Garden resulted in targeted ads.

So the first one didn’t first go online to search for information about this specific treatment to understand it better, before discussing it with his doctor?

 

[Amazing Iceman]

Apple is starting to become more exploited than the Amazon Rainforest.

 

[Fatyank]

does anyone know of any company anywhere that gets sued more than Apple?

Apple has the deepest pockets so everyone goes after them. The only people that make out on these “Class Action Suits” are the attorneys and they do just a fraction of the work. Paralegals etc.. do all the work. Attorney goes to court, files suit, extensions, appeals then collects 30% or more when settlement comes. Consumer gets a few dollars. Enough to maybe buy a Starbucks Latte. Load of B.S.

 

[RalfTheDog]

This is a test, Blue Jello. I repeat, "BLUE JELLO."

Now, lets see what happens.

 

[Techwatcher]

does anyone know of any company anywhere that gets sued more than Apple?

Now that Apple is going against their customers that defend them I say they deserve to get sued even more.

 

[mw360]

hmmm. Fact amazon and google both send targeted ads based on conversations overheard, it has happened to people in my family. Seeing apple doesn't sell that info, but we know google and amazon do, how about suing them, wouldn't there be more money for the lawyers? A quandary

They really don't. Any expert in this issue will tell you they already know what you're going to talk about from your online affairs and the online affairs of people they know you are connected to. The reality is actually more scary and invasive than them simply listening to random snippets of conversation. Some friend of yours searches for Nikes. You search for health and fitness advice. You meet up in a cafe the next day. Whether you mention Nike or not in the conversation, you'll get the Nike ads because Facebook or Amazon connected your interests.

 

[RalfTheDog]

Apple has the deepest pockets so everyone goes after them. The only people that make out on these “Class Action Suits” are the attorneys and they do just a fraction of the work. Paralegals etc.. do all the work. Attorney goes to court, files suit, extensions, appeals then collects 30% or more when settlement comes. Consumer gets a few dollars. Enough to maybe buy a Starbucks Latte. Load of B.S.

Sometimes you even get a year of free credit reporting.

 

[Duane Martin]

Defending them out of a false sense of loyalty is not a good thing, and we should shun people that idolize companies like it's some sort of fandom.

And what should we do with trolls who feign outrage at every imagined and fabricated story that appears in social media? Why do people who disagree with you have a "false sense of loyalty" rather than a better grasp on reality?

 

[Mousse]

Going to be hard to prove harm. Lawyers just looking for a lottery win.

Yep. Burden of proof is on the plaintiff. If I were a juror, coincidences ain't gonna cut it.

How can they prove that Siri was the source of the leak and not a Google/Bing/Yahoo search or a family/friend with loose lips? I don't see how Apple lose this case without some evidence pass the smell test.

 

[zakarhino]

And what should we do with trolls who feign outrage at every imagined and fabricated story that appears in social media? Why do people who disagree with you have a "false sense of loyalty" rather than a better grasp on reality?

Give examples of trolls that get angry at "imagined and fabricated stories on social media." Do you think the CSAM story was fabricated? Also when did I say everyone that disagrees with me has a "false sense of loyalty"?

 

[jimbobb24]

does anyone know of any company anywhere that gets sued more than Apple?

Walmart. Exxon Mobile. Probably Amazon and MS and Google. Big companies always getting sued.

 

[Johns12]

Critiquing companies is actually a good thing when dealing with a supposed 'free market.' Every consumer should get into the habit of doing that. They serve us, not the other way around. A "usual tirade of critics" of a business is a sign of a healthy consumer mindset that isn't blinded by sapping up marketing comments as gospel.

Defending them out of a false sense of loyalty is not a good thing, and we should shun people that idolize companies like it's some sort of fandom. Keeping companies in check and ensuring they serve our best interests is the responsibility of the consumer. No pushback = they take more and more steps towards looking out for their best interests over ours.

I would choose a "usual tirade of critics" any day over a "usual tirade of apologists."

And what should we do with trolls who feign outrage at every imagined and fabricated story that appears in social media? Why do people who disagree with you have a "false sense of loyalty" rather than a better grasp on reality?

Both can be right, both can be wrong. It's hard to find the middle.

 

[usagora]

"What happens on iPhone stays on iPhone"…

View attachment 1826578

Except Siri isn't all happening "on your iPhone".

 

[zakarhino]

Both can be right, both can be wrong. It's hard to find the middle.

"Both can be right, both can be wrong"

Yes. Exactly. PRECISELY. That's the entire point, when Apple deserve to be criticized they should be criticized. When Apple deserve to be defended they should be defended. The problem is with those that defend Apple because they take personal offense to criticisms of the company for some reason. If you're going to be one or the other (a critic or a defender) it's a lot better to be leaning toward the side of distrusting a company and criticizing rather than the other. The problem right now is too many people siding with Apple when they shouldn't, all because they buy into the propaganda.

 

[Jimmdean]

Pretty sure this can be easily explained - ask Siri a question she can’t answer out loud and she sends you to search results on your iphone, which is Google. boom - you just searched on Google for something and now you are getting targeted ads on all your devices. You can’t exactly blame Apple (you could change your default provider to duckduckgo for instance), but the two companies can’t exactly claim ignorance either as one pays the other billions of dollars to get those searches by default.

 

[Naraxus]

Used to be a time when you could trust Apple with your data. Sad to say we've all been deceived. Apple no longer has the moral high ground on privacy or data. In many way they're worse than Google. At least they've never hidden the fact they sell your data

 

[Carlos_X_el_magnifco]

It's really easy to believe this is happening when you see results seemingly too good to be true. A few years back I was talking to my boss about Eastern European poppyseed rolled cakes. That's an oddly specific thing and then a few hours later I was suddenly getting ads about bakeries that produce them through Google. I don't recall searching for them, but it may be that I had recently searched for and seen things that predisposed me to think about those cakes and that Google’s absolutely massive trove of data was able to predict that people who looked for X, Y, and Z were also likely to search for poppyseed rolled cakes. But I admit I was wondering “was Google listening in on me?” when I got those ads.

So I do not doubt that there are plenty of Siri users who think “wow, Apple sold my information to Google” when something like that happens. Never mind that they had queries from Siri through Google or other searches they themselves made that related enough to whatever they didn't explicitly ask about that they were getting ads.

And if we want really useful personal assistants, we sort of need them to have enough knowledge and state to give useful results. It's a strange situation where we want more relevant results and give enough data to get them and then turn around and kvetch when we get what we want because it shows that the tech companies know enough about us to deliver that.

This also make demonstration of harm really difficult: What is the harm if Google figured out I might want a poppyseed rolled cake? Maybe I bought one that I wouldn't have otherwise purchased, but is that a harm? That's the whole goal of advertising.

 

[Just sayin...]

…Defending them out of a false sense of loyalty is not a good thing, and we should shun people that idolize companies like it's some sort of fandom…

More than fandom. Closer to religion where heretics must be burned.

 

[Kuckuckstein]

does anyone know of any company anywhere that gets sued more than Apple?

If you have grown big and are no longer the pirate, if you take huge amounts of money based on bold claims that the user and her/his rights are above everything, then either you have a watertight “living up to these claims” or you get sued … because lawyers can smell the big pile of money collected.

But honestly, in this case - if Apple loses, Google, Amazon and Facebook have to lose 100 fold.

 

[kingtj1971]

I have a feeling this is a frivolous lawsuit, but it's also an accusation that Apple should have to prove is false in court, if the accusers really want to go to court over it. I don't see why Apple should get a free pass to not even have to defend themselves over it?

At least in the case of Facebook? I read what I thought was the most plausible explanation for some of this happening, posted on Slashdot once. Someone claimed that although Facebook wasn't actually listening to random conversations and sending marketing to people based on anything they heard? It was more of a targeted approach that was based on paid ad campaigns. So for example? If a Japanese airline wanted to pay to market an airfare discount, they might pay Facebook for a 2 week long campaign. That would include Facebook listening to random devices that it saw signed in to FB, waiting to hear one of a number of key "trigger words" like "Tokyo", "plane ticket", "trip to Japan", etc. When it heard a user say one of those, they'd start sending them info about the airline's promotions.

 

[Remy149]

People haven't stopped talking about it. The threads on MacRumors are still very active. The Apple subreddit has a daily mega thread to discuss it. Security experts are still writing articles about it. People are still signing petitions.

The only person that stopped talking about it is Apple. They know they're powerful enough to simply ignore customers' complaints. They know they've set up their ecosystem to be a take it or leave it deal and hardly anyone can go through the trouble of leaving an ecosystem they've invested so much time and money into. It's covert extortion and it's what happens when entities become too powerful to answer to the people they serve, be it the relationship between government and people or customer and cartel business.

Meanwhile most consumers don’t know or don’t care about it because they don’t follow tech news

 

[progx]

Facebook absolutely records audio for targeted advertising. Mostly using the messenger app and while the screen is off.

Don't forget Google, Amazon and Microsoft record you as well. Amazon's Alexa has the worst security on the planet and is easily hackable. There was a video a few years back where a hacker was talking to a child.

While I'm happy the lawsuit has made Siri dumb, but the amount of people who are willing to have Google Assistant, Alexa and Cortana on all the time blows my mind. Where are those lawsuits?

 

[I7guy]

Critiquing companies is actually a good thing when dealing with a supposed 'free market.' Every consumer should get into the habit of doing that. They serve us, not the other way around. A "usual tirade of critics" of a business is a sign of a healthy consumer mindset that isn't blinded by sapping up marketing comments as gospel.

Defending them out of a false sense of loyalty is not a good thing, and we should shun people that idolize companies like it's some sort of fandom. Keeping companies in check and ensuring they serve our best interests is the responsibility of the consumer. No pushback = they take more and more steps towards looking out for their best interests over ours.

I would choose a "usual tirade of critics" any day over a "usual tirade of apologists."

Sure as a general rule feel free to critique companies. That doesn’t mean the critique is just, valid, necessary or fair though.

I’m for a free market also. Maybe all companies should be forced to a free market status so there is no differentiation in the products and no differentiation in the quality everybody gets paid equally , etc.

So the usual critics are just as bad as the usual “apologists”.

Now back to the topic…it will be interesting to see the lawsuit conclusion.