Apple Contractors Reportedly Overhear Sensitive Information and Sexy Times Thanks to Siri

gizmodo ^ | 07/27/2019 | Alyse Stanley

[BenLurkin]

First Amazon, then Google, and now Apple have all confirmed that their devices are not only listening to you, but complete strangers may be reviewing the recordings. Thanks to Siri, Apple contractors routinely catch intimate snippets of users’ private lives like drug deals, doctor’s visits, and sexual escapades as part of their quality control duties, the Guardian reported Friday.

As part of its effort to improve the voice assistant, “[a] small portion of Siri requests are analysed to improve Siri and dictation,” Apple told the Guardian. That involves sending these recordings sans Apple IDs to its international team of contractors to rate these interactions based on Siri’s response, amid other factors. The company further explained that these graded recordings make up less than 1 percent of daily Siri activations and that most only last a few seconds.

That isn’t the case, according to an anonymous Apple contractor the Guardian spoke with. The contractor explained that because these quality control procedures don’t weed out cases where a user has unintentionally triggered Siri, contractors end up overhearing conversations users may not ever have wanted to be recorded in the first place. Not only that, details that could potentially identify a user purportedly accompany the recording so contractors can check whether a request was handled successfully.

“There have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on. These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data,” the whistleblower told the Guardian.

[thoughtomator]

I made Siri listen to an endless loop of the cheesiest one hit wonders from the 1970s and 80s. She’s now completely insane and incoherent but doesn’t listen in on me so much anymore.

[Sarah Barracuda]

My Apple Homepod is near my TV set and every so often I guess someone on the TV will say something and siri will say “Hmmm” and turn off

[House Atreides]

“...according to an anonymous Apple contractor the Guardian spoke with....
‘
****************************************
Gee, I should become a journalist. I know a lot of “anonymous” people and, if I don’t know them, I’m very creative and can make them up along with making up what they say.

[Disambiguator]

We have a rule in our house: no cell phones in the bathroom or bedroom.

[Ken H]

I’d turn the damn thing off . Suppose there’s a shooting on TV and siri calls the police.

[UB355]

I set my Echo dot next to the radio whenever I listen to Rush Limbaugh. I am sure heads explode.

[Dr. Sivana]

I made Siri listen to an endless loop of the cheesiest one hit wonders from the 1970s and 80s.

Timothy...Timothy...where on earth did you go?
Timothy, Timothy, God why don't I know?

Ooh I've been to Georgia and California
and, anywhere I could run
I took the hand of a preacher man
and we made love in the sun
but I ran out of places
and friendly faces
because I had to be free
I've been to paradise
but I've never been to me...


Well, at lunchtime
You can always find me
At the Whole Earth Vitamin Bar
Just sucking on my plain white yogurt
From my hand thrown pottery jar

And sippin' a little hand pressed cider
With a carrot stick for dessert
And wiping my face in a natural way
On the sleeve of my peasant shirt
Oh, yeah

[Dr.Deth]

Timothy...Timothy...where on earth did you go?
Timothy, Timothy, God why don't I know?

If you like Pina Coladas, and getting caught in the rain
If you´re not into yoga, if you have half a brain...

There's a little known relation between those two songs... besides the annoyance factor

[Sarah Barracuda]

I dont know where on the Homepod there is an option to mute it..I know with the Echo there is(I have two of them) but not with the apple homepod

[Paladin2]

I use a version 2 ED to listen to Rush while taking the dog for hikes in the National Forest. It is set up to connect to a Hot Spot thrown into the same backpack with a USB battery to run the ED.

[BenLurkin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bjqeNoi6EmM

[UB355]

I set my Echo dot next to the radio whenever I listen to Rush Limbaugh. I am sure heads explode.

[Dr. Sivana]

Amazing lyrics and synthesizer effects (Muskrat Love), but the Captain and Tenille were hardly “One Hit Wonders”

[Dr.Deth]

Challenge accepted

[BenLurkin]

Good point

[dayglored]

Hi Swordmaker.

So,... is this real? WTF?

[21twelve]

Awhile back there was a couple talking about redoing their kitchen on something. Siri or one of these things heard it and called the man’s coworker so the coworker could listen in! The coworker called he couple to tell them what was going on.

Seems the two guys had some sort of conference call feature on their phones that the qizmo in the couple’s house somehow linked to!

[OneVike]

I guess I just aint weird enough for those clowns to care about. Probably the worst they could catch is if I have to take a dump at the store and my phone is in my pocket.

Good luck enjoying the audio on that Siri.

[Swordmaker]

“There have been countless instances of recordings featuring private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters and so on.”

This is bovine cakes, Siri only listens and transmits what is said after athe key phrase "Hey, Siri" is said. That is controlled internally on the device by voice recognition that also handles phone dialing, and on device controls. Siri only transmits queries to the servers for questions that require parsing and internet responses.

Siri does not listen long, ("The company further explained that these graded recordings make up less than 1 percent of daily Siri activations and that most only last a few seconds."), nor are all Siri queries passed on to these sub-contractors, who when they do receive a voice recording, any data connecting it to any identifiable person has been stripped. Unlike the other voice activated devices, Apple is not interested in data mining your conversations, but only uses a very small percentage of the millions queries for quality control improvement in Siri’s voice recognition engine.

What we have here is a typical FUD Season article attempting to spread Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt as we approach the 3rd Quarter Apple Financial Conference Call coming up on July 30th at 2:00 PM Pacific time.

No real Apple sub-contractor would be revealing such confidential information and keep the contract. Even an employee revealing this privacy violating claim about his company’s business would result in his employer losing the contract. The claim that "’These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data,’ the whistleblower told the Guardian." Is proof of the bogus nature of this FUD article. Aside from the fact it comes in its entirety from The Guardian, a known promoter of FUD about Apple, Siri does not send user data, location, contact details, and most of all app data (it’s obviously coming from the Siri app, and sandboxed from other apps! So why send Siri App data to Apple with an audio recording?).

"Apple provides no such option in its products." More FUD. On all Apple devices, you can just turn Siri OFF! SHEESH!

IT’S APPLE FUD SEASON AGAIN!
PING!

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