Apple Confirms Siri's Data Was Never Used For Ads Or Sale

Apple emphasized Siri was never used to create marketing profiles (photo: x @CaschysBlog)

JAKARTA After approving a payment of US$95 million (Rp1.5 trillion) to settle a lawsuit related to Siri's privacy, Apple reiterated that the data Siri collected was never used to make marketing profiles or sell to any party for any purpose.

This lawsuit originated from a 2019 report by The Guardian revealing that Apple is using contractors to evaluate Siri interactions in order to improve service quality. In the report, a whistleblower stated that contractors often hear users' private conversations as part of their work.

Apple responded quickly at the time, explaining that less than 1% of the daily Siri activation' was used for evaluation, and only for a duration of a few seconds. In addition, this interaction is protected by strict confidentiality agreements and is not linked to the user's Apple ID.

Apple also introduced significant changes to Siri's privacy protection, including no longer saving recordings of interaction by default. Users now have to give permission actively if they want to help Siri learn from their audio samples. Only Apple employees can hear this recording, and accidentally activated recordings will be removed soon.

Responding to rumors circulating after the settlement of the lawsuit, Apple firmly denied allegations that Siri was being used to spy on users for targeted advertising.

"Siri has been designed to protect user privacy from the start. Siri data has never been used to create marketing profiles and has never been sold to any party for any purpose. We are finalizing this case to avoid further litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party evaluations that we have handled since 2019. We are using Siri data to improve Siri, and we are continuing to develop technology to make Siri more privacy," said an Apple spokesperson, quoted by VOI from 9to5Mac.

Apple emphasizes that Siri's interaction is associated with random identification, not Apple ID or other identity information. After six months, the description of the request is also no longer related to the random identification.

Some Siri requests are even fully processed on the device. For example, when the user asks Siri to read the message, the process is done locally without sending message content to Apple's servers.

Apple has also integrated Private Cloud Compute technology built on Apple Silicon chips to ensure user privacy.

This case underscores the importance of transparency in AI-based technologies such as Siri. Although Apple has improved privacy policies since 2019, some regret that this change was only made after the complainant. The opt-in system should have been implemented from the start.

However, Apple continues to demonstrate its commitment to user privacy by introducing additional measures to increase data protection. Thus, allegations that Siri is being used for targeted advertising do not have a solid fact basis.