For those of you who don’t know what Siri is, Siri is a virtual assistant that is part of Apple’s iOS, iPadOS, watchOS, macOS, and tvOS operating systems.
Supposedly Siri won’t ever activiate unless my Siri enabled devices hear the magic phrase: “Hey Siri…”
So why do I say “fucking Siri” whenever Siri randomly chimes in – FUCKING UNEXPECTEDLY – when I’m watching TV, or on the phone, or just talking to friends and neighbors? Simple – I never said to my device: “Hey Siri…”
The link on Macrumors regarding Siri – found at https://www.macrumors.com/2021/02/10/apple-siri-recording-lawsuit-dismissed/ and The Guardian newspaper clearly stated that:
The class action lawsuit was first filed in August 2019 after it became known that Apple had employed contractors to listen to and grade some anonymized Siri conversations for product improvement purposes.
Those contractors told The Guardian that they overheard confidential medical details, drug deals, and other private information from accidental Siri activations, and some expressed concern that users were not adequately informed about the recordings.
All of the allegations in the lawsuit were based on information that was included in the original story from The Guardian highlighting Apple’s use of contractors to analyze Siri data, with the plaintiffs providing no proof that their own private data was accidentally collected by Apple and misused.
The Guardian article does not plausibly suggest that all Apple’s devices were subject to accidental triggers and review by third party contractors, much less that such interception always occurred in reasonably private settings. The article discusses frequency of accidental triggers primarily in relation to the Apple Watch and the HomePod speakers, neither of which are owned by the Plaintiffs.
Moreover, the article expressly states that only a “small portion” of daily Siri activations including were sent to contractors and that they included both deliberate and accidental activations. Finally, although the article describes private communications among the recordings sent to contractors, Plaintiffs allege no facts to suggest that their own private communications were intercepted by accidental triggers.