Apple Says Siri Data Has Never Been Sold or Used for Marketing

[ApplesAreSweet&Sour]

While I completely understand the very common reaction to these kinds of settlements that seem like they're just done to avoid exposing something terrible that could ruin the defendant, I have to remind everyone that lack of evidence doesn't prove anything. And these kinds of settlements are quite common.

I'm not to say I trust Apple to the extent that I know they didn't do anything wrong with all the stuff that goes into the microphones on Apple devices.

But if I give them the benefit of the doubt, and maybe read a little between the lines of their response to the accusations, it sounds as if Apple is guaranteeing us that they never sold any kind of interaction done by any user through Siri, as in Siri specifically.

What could still be true, and still quite incriminating, is that there might be other types of audio and data related to audio input captured through any or all of Apple's devices that Apple isn't accounting for with that statement.

Then again, the fact that Apple has users opt in if they want to share "audio recordings" with Apple seems that they aren't storing audio recordings and using them unless users actively agree to it.

Are we really suggesting the tech giant with the worst voice assistant ever, Siri, faked the whole "Siri happens mainly on-device so we can't make it a lot better" but actually did collect all the audio and data and sold it off to third-parties the whole time? That's too far out to me, especially considering all of the other privacy focused products that Apple has launched throughout the years.

Surely Apple wouldn't have to move so aggressively into the services product category if all the "on-device" "PRIVACY" stuff was just a scam and they were really selling all the data all these years? Seems very unlikely.

 

[bLackjackj]

Than you shouldn't have paid compensation! Stop trying to defend yourself Apple, it's coming across as awkward. If there was one case to fight,..this would have been the ONE.

 

[bLackjackj]

Roku is using data on you bought from one of the very many companies that collect and consolidate such data. Tubi is either not using targeting or using a different data source.

Oh please,..EVERY company that has a return path is collecting your data in some form or capacity.

 

[Pezimak]

Yes, Apple also said it did not have anyone listening to your interactions with Siri either, or that Siri would ‘accidentally’ activate and record everything it hears for a few minutes and then have a third party listen to those recordings, to improve Siri…..

 

[Sippincider]

For $20? That doesn’t seem very likely.

For the small person, of course not. But for the next billboard outfit looking to cash in on the "legal fees" part of a settlement...

If Apple is genuinely innocent, this ranks with paying off a crypto-malware attacker.

 

[Tagbert]

I feel that while this statement is technically true on the surface, it's also disingenuous. Per Apple's privacy policy on Siri:



So your requests are assigned a random, but unique, identifier; so all your requests are associated with a single user, even though that user to Apple is allegedly unknown. This seems fine on the surface until you realize that all your requests are associated to that single identifier and it would not take much to piece together who is making the requests, especially considering later in the privacy policy it states:

Apple can say what they want about privacy, but it's all marketing. They harvest data just like everyone else with the end goal being to exploit users as much as possible for revenue.

You were doing pretty good for a while but then you took off on a tangent with no supporting evidence there. What harvesting do you think was done and what purpose could it have served? Apple doesn’t have the large advertising network that might benefit from targeted ads. They only do very limited keyword-based app listing ads on the App Store and that doesn’t require personalized data just search terms. That “just like everyone else” phrase diffuses and dilutes the guilt for companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google that really do this kind of data collection and targeted advertising.

 

[Tagbert]

I agree that using data to improve versus selling is different.

However, I do not agree that Apple doesn't have a major stake in my (and others') information. They absolutely use the data to bolster their revenue. Apple is a phone company that sells service subscriptions as an add-on; there is no way they are not using user data to position their hardware and services in a manner that generates the most revenue for them.

On the other hand, if we (hypothetically) agree that said data is used only for improving Siri, they we are forced to acknowledge that Apple is really, really, really, bad at this.

What you are describing is the kind of stats that any company would collect about how its products are doing and would tailor those products to better meet the customer’s needs. That kind of data is only useful in the aggregate, not on an individual user basis. They don’t care what you, user A, are doing and what you might say to Siri. That’s just noise. They want to know are users listening to music, are they watching the latest episode of “Slow Horses”, which model of the Watch sold better last month than the others.

As Apple said at the time, they were using the recordings of accidental Siri triggers to determine how to better handle those triggers and do less false triggers. It was a couple of years later that they brought out the ability to just call for “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri” every time. The recording reviews seem to have worked but there was blowback on the process.

Siri itself has obviously had little changes in the last several years, other than moving more of the processing locally. The tech behind the current Siri is a very old, natural language processing tech that barely qualifies as AI. Yes, Alexa and Google Assistant are better in some ways but the difference is really incremental. All three are **** for too many use cases. Now that we have LLM AI tech, there is hope that these assistants can do a better job of interpreting our requests and matching those to specific actions. Google has made process on that transition with Gemini. Amazon hasn’t shown their plans yet. Apple is starting to do some LLM integration but it will probably be another year before we really start to see big changes in Siri.

 

[sleeptodream]

I wondered about that, but so far I think I believe Apple, but maybe I'm being naive.

I can imagine why they are fine with settling out of court, because potentially (I'm guessing) that going to court might require Apple to reveal more about their technology than they really want to make public or some other thing like that.

So far with regards to privacy and confidentiality, I have trusted Apple. Again, maybe I'm naive.

I trust them too, they’re the only big tech company I trust because they make the majority of their revenue from hardware sales, not advertising. It wouldn’t make sense to break the trust of your customers when that isn’t the core of your business

I’m assuming they settled, more than anything (even the money), to avoid the ongoing negative press that a drawn out trial could incur, and as others have pointed out not wanting things to come up during the discovery portion

 

[Tagbert]

It is getting even worse with Meta. I watch a lot Tubi streaming, I started noticing on the one TV I don't have an ATV but use the Roku app Tubi has started to show me ads based on thing I clicked on in Facebook. It could be a coincidence, but it's happened more than once.

Roku’s main business model is selling user watch history and showing targeted ads. That is the same for all of the smart TVs, too. If you think that companies are spying on your to sell ads, maybe Siri isn’t the source.

 

[Tagbert]

A lot of people are assuming Meta is using our phones to feed the ads, but wouldn't there have to be the orange dot showing up at the top of the screen for that to happen? If not.... isn't that a problem? I thought that's what it was for.

Yes, that is true for audio data. Where Facebook gets its data for ad targeting is more through deals with multiple apps, websites, and with matching your social graph. They don’t need to listen when a majority of websites track you and share that with Facebook and/or Amazon and Google.

 

[novagamer]

What you are describing is the kind of stats that any company would collect about how its products are doing and would tailor those products to better meet the customer’s needs. That kind of data is only useful in the aggregate, not on an individual user basis. They don’t care what you, user A, are doing and what you might say to Siri. That’s just noise. They want to know are users listening to music, are they watching the latest episode of “Slow Horses”, which model of the Watch sold better last month than the others.

As Apple said at the time, they were using the recordings of accidental Siri triggers to determine how to better handle those triggers and do less false triggers. It was a couple of years later that they brought out the ability to just call for “Siri” instead of “Hey Siri” every time. The recording reviews seem to have worked but there was blowback on the process.

Siri itself has obviously had little changes in the last several years, other than moving more of the processing locally. The tech behind the current Siri is a very old, natural language processing tech that barely qualifies as AI. Yes, Alexa and Google Assistant are better in some ways but the difference is really incremental. All three are **** for too many use cases. Now that we have LLM AI tech, there is hope that these assistants can do a better job of interpreting our requests and matching those to specific actions. Google has made process on that transition with Gemini. Amazon hasn’t shown their plans yet. Apple is starting to do some LLM integration but it will probably be another year before we really start to see big changes in Siri.

I really, really hope that Apple allows updated Siri to work without Apple Intelligence enabled because finding the new and unique ways it is breaking things throughout the OS has made me disable it entirely, and I don't see that changing for many years. Mail summaries cost me a giant chunk of a day misreporting something and I swore off it entirely, and they keep adding new things to each OS update so it's not like I can sit down and check 19 toggles in iOS 18 and then be good for a year, I have to keep checking after every damned update and I can't be bothered.

Siri is notably worse with Apple Intelligence off right now, even the on-device voice recognition / transcription (I have the text to speech window on). It doesn't make any damn sense except as a punitive wedge to get you to keep Apple Intelligence on globally.

I really wish media outlets would focus on this kind of thing... hint hint, Macrumors... you could have an entire damn story about this specifically that would probably go viral.

I love the on-device autocomplete in MacOS (which is ideal since it's optional and easy to invoke or ignore) and Math Notes is incredible, and neither of those need the global toggle enabled.

 

[Dave-Z]

What harvesting do you think was done and what purpose could it have served?

Apple does a lot of data harvesting. It's detailed extensively on their own privacy page. The purpose it serves is as I previously described:

They harvest data just like everyone else with the end goal being to exploit users as much as possible for revenue.

That “just like everyone else” phrase diffuses and dilutes the guilt for companies like Facebook, Amazon, and Google that really do this kind of data collection and targeted advertising.

What you are describing is the kind of stats that any company would collect about how its products are doing and would tailor those products to better meet the customer’s needs. That kind of data is only useful in the aggregate, not on an individual user basis. They don’t care what you, user A, are doing and what you might say to Siri. That’s just noise. They want to know are users listening to music, are they watching the latest episode of “Slow Horses”, which model of the Watch sold better last month than the others.

I generally agree with what you have written. Though we have different opinions regarding the use of the data collected. Based on the quote above, my understanding is that your opinion is that Apple is different because the data they collect is not used for things like targeted advertising. In my opinion, the use of said data is entirely irrelevant. I don't want data collected on how I use my devices. Apple, being a company that promotes privacy ad nauseam, should afford me the option to have no data collected. Period.

 

[sleeptodream]

Apple does a lot of data harvesting. It's detailed extensively on their own privacy page. The purpose it serves is as I previously described:






I generally agree with what you have written. Though we have different opinions regarding the use of the data collected. Based on the quote above, my understanding is that your opinion is that Apple is different because the data they collect is not used for things like targeted advertising. In my opinion, the use of said data is entirely irrelevant. I don't want data collected on how I use my devices. Apple, being a company that promotes privacy ad nauseam, should afford me the option to have no data collected. Period.

There are settings you can turn off for that though, right? I turn off everything under “Analytics & Improvements”, and under Product Improvement in location services

With “Improve Siri & Dictation” switched off, I assume they don’t collect anything

 

[novagamer]

There are settings you can turn off for that though, right? I turn off everything under “Analytics & Improvements”, and under Product Improvement in location services

Yes and what they do collect is also usually anonymized, outside of personalized advertising in the App store which you can disable. People freak out about collecting hotspot taps in the App Store or whatever but it is small potatoes compared to the reams of data TikTok and Instagram collect even without getting into their ad networks or surveillance ecosystems.

Apple has a corporate culture of this, and it's reinforced from the highest levels down. Even the Siri recordings were anonymized and stored for a certain period of time before being deleted, not that it was ever OK, but they weren't associating them with a user and keeping them indefinitely. It doesn't make it OK, but check out other policies that big tech has... even Apple at their bottom was doing a better job respecting individuals.

It's still good they got negative press for this, because it means doubling-down on it. I was very concerned about the iAd insertion into Maps and even emailed their executive team about it, I think they thankfully scaled that way back from the initial pitch because it was going to be a huge misstep.

 

[canadianreader]

They should have said "never been sold or given away for free"

 

[NativeMac]

Definitely seeing some logical conclusions on here as to why Apple may have settled, but…the tinfoil hat, conspiracy theorist in me still wonders haha 🤣

 

[Le0M]

How does it work in the US? Does the losing party have to pay all the expenses to the winning party?
If not, then settling would make sense.
Otherwise, Apple is obviously guilty.

I mean, why would you settle if you know you are right (so there can be no proof against you whatsoever) and the losing party has to pay for all the expenses?

 

[surferfb]

How does it work in the US? Does the losing party have to pay all the expenses to the winning party?
If not, then settling would make sense.
Otherwise, Apple is obviously guilty.

Not automatically - they have to be awarded by the judge/jury, which is less likely t Happen with a corporation like Apple (“they have trillions of dollars, they can afford it”). And even if the losing party has to pay “legal fees” that doesn’t account for things like staff and executive time preparing for depositions, gathering evidence for discovery, etc. I Imagine “legal fees” can even more complicated when the lawyers work for Apple instead of a law firm that bills Apple.

I mean, why would you settle if you know you are right (so there can be no proof against you whatsoever) and the losing party has to pay for all the expenses?

See above and my previous post in the thread. It’s almost certain Apple paid less in the settlement than if they had gone to trial and WON

 

[freekorps]

Why does it say in a newbie when I’ve been here for ten years?

 

[subjonas]

Well anyone who uses Siri knows it wasn’t used to improve the product, so what was the data collected for?

One possibility is that Siri’s inferiority is a result of how little data is actually collected—because if the data collected was as rich (and personal) as Google’s or Amazon’s methods, then Siri might be as good.

 

[surferfb]

Why does it say in a newbie when I’ve been here for ten years?

That is based on number of posts. If you mainly just read and don’t comment you’ll show as a newbie.

 

[picpicmac]

Strange….

Not.

Companies settle small lawsuits all the time, just so they will go away. If this lawsuit went before a jury there is a small chance the jury will settle in favor of the ones who brought the suit, hence throwing a few million dollars to make it go away is just easier.

 

[vantelimus]

Oh please,..EVERY company that has a return path is collecting your data in some form or capacity.

Reread what I wrote. I didn't say anything about whether Tubi is collecting data on you. They likely are collecting data on you so that it can make suggestions for what you might watch. That is independent of whether they are using external data sources to target ads to you as it seems Roku is. There are dozens of companies that collect and consolidate information on people both online and in the terrestrial world. It is (almost) all offered online to be used for targeted advertising. You are tracked, collated, sorted, pigeonholed, pegged in your social networks, prizm®ed, and targeted.

 

[spazzcat]

Roku’s main business model is selling user watch history and showing targeted ads. That is the same for all of the smart TVs, too. If you think that companies are spying on your to sell ads, maybe Siri isn’t the source.

I know the source isn't Siri. I just been putting off getting a ATV for the TV.

 

[Dave-Z]

There are settings you can turn off for that though, right? I turn off everything under “Analytics & Improvements”, and under Product Improvement in location services

With “Improve Siri & Dictation” switched off, I assume they don’t collect anything

Yes and what they do collect is also usually anonymized

No, it is not the case that with turning off "Improve Siri & Dictation" data is not collected; data is very much still collected. This is detailed in Apple's privacy policy for Siri, which I linked to earlier in this thread and is part of the reason for my commenting earlier. Apple still collects data with the setting off, they do anonymize it but as I mentioned earlier it wouldn't be difficult for anyone to figure out who you are if you use Siri regularly.

The Analytics & Improvements, I'm sure, turns off some analytics, but not all. A developer as recently as 2022 tested whether this setting made any practical difference and the results were not good. In my own experience, I don't have any jailbroken devices so I cannot monitor the actual contents of the traffic; however, I have run my iPad through a proxy and discovered that even with all analytics settings turned off and all Apple services turned off (iCloud, etc.), using the iPad resulted in dozens of requests to Apple servers even though I was not visiting any Apple sites nor using any Apple first-party applications.

I currently use AdGuard Pro on my iPad and it runs a local VPN to filter all traffic. As of right now the only service from Apple that I use is Apple Music and, of course, the App Store. I am not signed in to iCloud, iMessage, etc. The report in the AdGuard app indicates that Apple's servers are the most blocked (ads and analytics).

It would be nice if Apple allowed us to truly disable all analytics, but they do not.