Apple opens up about Siri privacy in wake of lawsuit
Apple has affirmed its Siri privacy policies following a lawsuit settlement that revived rumors that the voice assistant was spying on users.
"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," said a statement published on Wednesday.
The statement was prompted by the settlement of a 2019 class-action lawsuit against Apple that was filed on Dec. 31, 2024. The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of the Northern District of California, pertained to allegations that Siri was inadvertently activated on Apple devices without the wake word and private conversations were recorded and listened to by third-party contractors.
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A 2021 filing from the same lawsuit detailed how plaintiffs reported conversing about specific brands, such as "Air Jordans" and "Olive Garden. " Then, they saw targeted ads for those brands appear in Apple Safari and third-party apps. This led the plaintiffs' lawyers to conclude that Apple must have sold those Siri recordings to advertisers.
However, while Apple acknowledged giving Siri recordings to third-party contractors for quality control testing, the tech giant vehemently denies ever selling Siri data for targeted advertising.
In the wake of the 2019 investigation and lawsuit, Apple changed its policy for Siri quality control testing, making it opt-in by default and sharing minimal anonymized Siri data only with Apple employees. "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. Users can easily opt-out at any time," said the statement.
While it seems like the logical conclusion that Siri is spying on you for the purpose of serving your targeted ads, there are other explanations. Ads target people in the same network or in close proximity. So, if you were talking about Air Jordans with a friend because they happened to have just purchased a pair, you might get a targeted ad because of granular location tracking data.
Cecily is a tech reporter at Mashable who covers AI, Apple, and emerging tech trends. Before getting her master's degree at Columbia Journalism School, she spent several years working with startups and social impact businesses for Unreasonable Group and B Lab. Before that, she co-founded a startup consulting business for emerging entrepreneurial hubs in South America, Europe, and Asia. You can find her on X at @cecily_mauran.
