Sometimes an apology (or at least a firm commitment not to do something) is in order.
Apple on Wednesday reiterated its commitment to Siri privacy, stating that data collected with Siri has never been used to create marketing profiles, nor has any Siri information been made available to advertisers or sold for any purpose. The post comes after the company’s settlement of a class action lawsuit related to Siri in which Apple paid out $95 million. Plaintiffs accused Apple of recording conversations captured after accidental Siri activations, and then sharing information from those conversations with third-party advertisers.
In the case, two plaintiffs stated that after openly discussing products such as Air Jordan shoes and Olive Garden, their Apple devices began to show ads for those products. Another plaintiff stated that he received ads for a surgical treatment after discussing it privately with his doctor.
In its full privacy overview, Apple goes into detail on the Siri privacy protections that are in place to keep user data safe. Apple uses on-device Siri processing wherever possible, and minimizes the amount of data that’s collected as much as possible. The searches and requests are not associated with a given Apple Account and cannot be linked to an individual user. Apple has also stated that it uses a random identifier to keep track of data as it’s processed.
Apple says that it does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, recordings are used just for that purpose.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.