Seeing people unquestioningly repeating this and it's not true. There has never been a single bit of non-circumstantial evidence of Apple using Siri conversations for ad targeting, and the settlement is for Apple sharing recordings of accidental Siri activations with their QA subcontractors.
Reposted from
Karl Bode
"The only clue that users seemingly had of Siri's alleged spying was eerily accurate targeted ads that appeared after they had just been talking about specific items like Air Jordans or brands like Olive Garden"
Comments
Weird how people think they're being listened to because on one (1) occasion they happened to be served an ad for something they were just talking about
Ignoring all the hundreds of other times that has not happened and they get served completely irrelevant ads
This is just pareidolia.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion
It's like telling people the number 32 is profound in some way and then them suddenly noticing how often 32 occurs.
They're not spying, we've just been primed to think about it.
1) Rather than simply doing limited listening for the "hey Siri" like they claim, Apple is instead using massive amounts of computing power to parse ambient noise 24/7 and extract advertising keywords from it, which they then pass to one or more third parties--
(Getting so tired of this recurring panic...)
Monday he told me he got served an as for the greatest show of all time, Most Xtreme Challenge.
Eternal surveillance!
Like no, your privacy *is* being violated, but they're not wasting the compute power to parse muffled speech from your pocket, you just think about things you discuss, and *radiate* data they can triangulate.
Confirmation bias is powerful but so is rejection bias.
Often there will be some big-tech-does-bad story underneath, but they (Ars) aren't reliable explainers.
If my phone were listening and I randomly started talking about a high $ desire, I'd expect ads to follow.
It never happens.
I don't think this evidence supports the extraordinary claims the article is making!
Because I know I've seen ads pop up after talking about things I had NEVER looked up or talked about previously.
/1
/2
Like I said, absolutely no previous connection to me at all before that conversation. No texts were exchanged between us about it either.
/x
Share a WiFi MAC address a few times, and now you also share ads. It’s like digital herpes!
Also, no, Siri was prompted, it just wasn't on purpose. Machines aren't perfect with speech recognition.
It's funny and annoying sharing a name with a beloved/hated & relied on/distrusted ap. But no one asks me how to say/spell my name anymore.