[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.

[UB355]

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

[UB355]

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

[dayglored]

Hi Swordmaker.

So,... is this real? WTF?

[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!

If you want on or off the Apple/Mac/iOS Ping List, Freepmail me.

[Rio]

I want to be a radio DJ and trigger everyone’s siri to do fun things.

[TheBattman]

“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.