Apple says Siri data has ‘never been used’ for marketing profiles or ‘sold to anyone for any purpose’ 

Last week Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged “unlawful and intentional recording” of interactions with Siri.

Apple’s settlement has led to a wave of conspiracy theories claiming Siri is listening to you to target ads, but the company says those claims are completely unfounded.

Siri privacy controversy

Let us recall that the claim arose due to Report for 2019 in Guardian it revealed that Apple is using contractors to “evaluate” the Siri experience. The whistleblower featured in the story alleged that these contractors regularly overheard users’ private conversations as part of their work to ensure Siri’s “quality control.”

At the time, Apple quickly responded to the allegations, saying that “less than 1% of daily Siri activations” were used for “scoring” and that these activations typically lasted only a few seconds. The interactions were also subject to “Apple’s Strict Confidentiality Agreement” and were not associated with the user’s Apple ID.

Apple Also subsequently announced several changes about protecting Siri’s privacy in a post in Apple Newsroom. The big change was that by default Apple no longer kept records of interactions with Siri. Instead, users could sign up to help Siri improve by “learning from audio samples of their queries.” Apple also said that “only Apple employees” will be allowed to listen to audio recordings of interactions with Siri, not third-party contractors, and any recording that is “determined to inadvertently trigger Siri” will be quickly deleted.

Is your iPhone listening to you to show you ads? Nope.

Fast forward to 2025: Last week, Apple agreed to settle that 2019 lawsuit with a $95 million payout to users. In a statement for 9to5Mac Apple said today that it settled the case to “move away concerns about third-party assessments that we raised in 2019.”

The company says Siri data “has never been used to create marketing profiles and has never been sold to anyone for any purpose.”

Here’s the full statement from an Apple spokesperson:

Siri was originally designed to protect user privacy. Siri data has never been used to create marketing profiles and has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we could address the third-party valuation concerns we discussed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri and are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.

Last week’s news gave birth to A number unreasonable conspiracy theories Using Apple’s agreement as proof that your iPhone is “always listening to you” and spying on you for targeted advertising. Apple tells me that this is completely false, and what you share with Siri is never shared with advertisers.

Apple says throughout the lawsuit it has repeatedly denied allegations that Siri recordings were used for targeted advertising, and has provided no evidence to the contrary.

In fact, interactions with Siri are tied to a random identifier that allows Apple to track the data during processing. These interactions are not tied to your Apple account, phone number, or any other identifying information. After six months, the query history is also not associated with this random identifier. All these details (and more) emphasized on the Apple website on the Siri and dictation privacy web page.

Additionally, you can manually view and delete Siri transcripts directly from Settings. Just go to the Settings app and look for the Siri & Dictation History option.

Some Siri requests are also processed entirely on the device. For example, if you ask Siri to read your unread messages, it will do so by simply telling your iPhone to read your messages out loud. The message content is not sent to Apple servers.

In terms of Apple Intelligence features, Apple also emphasizes the use of private cloud computing. Apple Private Cloud Computing Infrastructure built on Apple’s own Silicon chips and is open to outside researchers to ensure privacy protection.

Opinion 9to5Mac

All of this is to say that news headlines suggesting that this lawsuit is proof that your phone is “always listening to you” are nothing more than baseless conspiracy theories. In fact, it is completely impossible for your interaction with Siri to be used for targeted advertising given the privacy protections put in place by Apple.

This, of course, does not justify Apple’s reactive rather than proactive approach to a situation that first arose in 2019. Apple should have had more privacy protections in place before this and didn’t have to go to the whistleblower to respond. . The system should have been activated from the very beginning. However, Apple has since continued to strengthen Siri’s privacy protections.

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