Posted on 07/27/2019 5:33:14 PM PDT by 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at gizmodo.com ...
“...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....”
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Gee... we could almost set our clocks based on the FUD appearances.
Yes, Apple does QA on Siri voice input from users. No, the sub-contractors are not getting huge piles of privacy violating conversations between physicians and patients, criminal, sexual escapades, etc. for one thing at any momentary break in the conversation, Siri would say, "I’m sorry, I didn’t understand that.” Or "I found this on the web about hold ups!" Or "I can connect you to the nearest attorney’s office for help with your transactions." And shut up. . . And wait for the user to provide a selection. Siri just doesn’t keep listening without responding.
It’s pure unadulterated, Grade-A FUD.
Apple’s 3rd Quarter financial results conference call is coming up on July 30th at 2PM and this is a FUD attempt to suppress AAPL stock prices prior to the announcement of those results so some investors can sell high, then buy low, then sell high again. It happens like clockwork whenever there’s any major Apple event, especially a financial results report. For the three weeks prior to those events the Fudsters hone their creative skills and write fiction based on rumor, perhaps based on a smidgen of fact, but fact isn’t required.
It wasn’t Siri or Apple. It was an Amazon Alexa device. It heard them mention his name.
Well, at least your calendars.
I start seeing FUD articles appear, I look for major Apple events coming up I may be unaware of, and they are always upcoming within two to three weeks. . . sometimes they’ve been only just announced or Apple has just rented the venue, but here come the FUD articles. . . marched out by the usual players, with The Guardian as one of the leaders of the pack. "Apple" in the headline, even if the company has only a fleeting mention in the article itself which has little of substance to report on Apple, promotes advertising clicks.
Interesting that you see a correlation between Apple events and Apple FUD. I haven’t thought about this or even speculated that such activity could take place. But seriously, I doubt that such articles could move the Apple stock price. These rags and their authors don’t have that much authority, respect, or reach to move the stock price. If there is any stock price movement, I would suspect it’s less than the transaction cost to buy and sell an Apple share. If this were true, wouldn’t others not involved in the scam also observe this predictable behavior and make money at every earnings announcement?
Rent a Russian spy movie they way the democrats can get Mueller’s job back.
I want to be a radio DJ and trigger everyone’s siri to do fun things.
. . . and lose your station half its listenership - and lose your gig - in a single day . . .
Thanks and bookmark.
“countless” - as in they didn’t bother to count the handful?
Don’t get me wrong - I don’t want anyone snooping on my “Private” conversations. But this is quite likely over-blown (or FUD, as Swordmaker calls it). This also ignores the difference between Google/Amazon and Apple. The former platforms actively listen BEYOND assistant-summoned conversations.
The recordings of gay sex are forwarded right to Tim.
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