'We have never misused customer data', Apple reaffirms Siri's privacy security

The statement comes days after Apple settled a $95 million (approx. Rs 815.72 crore) class action lawsuit. The litigators claimed that Apple had sold their voice recordings to advertisers.

Apple clarified on Wednesday (January 8) that user interaction with Siri on its devices is secure and was never misused or shared with third-party advertisers.

The statement comes days after Apple settled a $95 million (approx. Rs 815.72 crore) class action lawsuit. The litigators claimed that the Cupertino-based company had sold their voice recordings to advertisers.

In a bid to avoid the case being dragged unnecessarily for years, Apple has agreed to settle it in the court in Northern California next month on February 14.

"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. We are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private, and will continue to do so," the Cupertino-based technology company reiterated its pledge to protect customers' privacy.

Since the very beginning, Apple has been a strong advocate of user privacy protection in consumer products.

Compared to big companies such as Google, Amazon, Facebook and Microsoft, Apple, over the years, has steadily enhanced user privacy security in all its devices.

In 2021, with the iOS 14.5 update, Apple introduced stringent measures to control the apps from tracking user information. It started with the company making it mandatory for app developers to show a privacy nutrition chart on the Apple App Store with details on what user data is being collected and why.

And, it also introduced a kill switch to stop all apps on Apple devices to stop tracking users. This prevents app companies from creating an IDFA (Identifier for Advertisers), wherein they link a phone user with data points such as mobile ID, browsing history, age, relationship status, location, and others. Also, they not only tracked users on their own apps but also monitored user activities on other third-party apps and websites.

Concerning user interaction with Siri, the queries and the responses are processed on-device and are never streamed to any cloud server.

For instance, when a user asks Siri to read unread messages, or when Siri provides suggestions through widgets and Siri search, the processing is done on the user’s device. The contents of the messages aren’t transmitted to Apple servers, because that isn’t necessary to fulfill the request, the company noted.

"And for capable devices, the audio of user requests is processed entirely on the device using the Neural Engine, unless a user chooses to share it with Apple," it added.

In the recently released Apple Intelligence-powered Siri, Apple has set up robust security to protect user data.

Most of the Apple Intelligence features work on-device. For requests that require cloud connectivity to access larger models, Apple has set up Private Cloud Compute to protect the privacy and security of devices and their owners' details. Nothing is stored or shared with any third-party affiliates, not even Apple.

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