Just days after settling a class action lawsuit, global tech giant Apple, on Wednesday, clarified that it has never sold the data collected by its Siri voice assistant or used it to create marketing profiles, as alleged by several users.
The iPhone maker last week paid $95 million to settle a class action lawsuit in which plaintiffs alleged it routinely recorded their private conversations after they activated Siri unintentionally, and disclosed these conversations to third parties such as advertisers.
Voice assistants typically react when people use “hot words” such as “Hey, Siri.”
Apple Issues Statement
The Cupertino-based company denied those claims and did not admit to them in its settlement last week, in which tens of millions of Apple customers may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, such as iPhones and Apple Watches.
“Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose,” the company said on Wednesday.
Apple issued the statement after social media users and commentators interpreted the settlement as confirmation that the allegations were true.
In its statement, the Cupertino, California-based company said that certain features require real-time input from Apple servers and it is only in such cases that Siri uses as little data as possible to deliver an accurate result.
“Apple does not retain audio recordings of Siri interactions unless users explicitly opt in to help improve Siri, and even then, the recordings are used solely for that purpose,” Apple said, adding that it will continue developing technologies to make Siri even more private.
Possible August Trial
A similar lawsuit on behalf of users of Google’s Voice Assistant is pending in the San Jose, California federal court. The plaintiffs are represented by the same law firms as in the Apple case.
Meanwhile, Google has failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a privacy class action claiming it collected personal data from people’s cellphones after they switched off a button to stop the tracking, paving the way for a possible August trial.
Chief Judge Richard Seeborg of the federal court in San Francisco rejected arguments that the search engine company adequately disclosed how its Web & App Activity settings worked, and that users consented to the tracking.
(With inputs from Reuters)
