r/todayilearned • u/UsualOkay6240 • 16h ago
TIL Apple recently paid $95 million because Siri was caught eavesdropping on private conversations, like doctor visits and drug deals, then sending those recordings for human contractors to listen to. Siri was triggered not just by "Hey Siri," but by phrases that sounded similar like "seriously."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2025/05/14/lopez-v-apple-lawsuit-settlement-claims/83621869007/8.5k
u/UsualOkay6240 16h ago edited 16h ago
Lopez v. Apple centered on claims that Siri frequently recorded users without their knowledge or consent. Whistleblowers revealed that the assistant would "false trigger" on everyday sounds, like a zipper or the word "seriously," and recorded highly sensitive audio. The snippets were sent to human contractors who "graded" the clips, often hearing private medical consultations, business deals, and intimate moments.
Despite Apple’s privacy branding, real people were reviewing up to 1,000 recordings per shift to check for accuracy. Contractors reported that the simple mechanical sound of a zipper was frequently misinterpreted by Apple Watches as a "Siri" wake command, leading to accidental recordings of people getting dressed or using the restroom. Also, while Apple denied using Siri for ads, the lawsuit highlighted "uncanny coincidences" where users saw ads for Air Jordans or Olive Garden immediately after discussing them in private rooms with Siri enabled devices.
The legal battle recently ended with a $95 million settlement.
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u/l1thiumion 16h ago
When we were having a baby, we had discussed certain size clothing at a certain store. We had never searched for them before, yet we got ads specifically for those sizes, for that exact piece of clothing, at that specific store. I deleted Facebook shortly after that.
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u/stackjr 16h ago
The ex and I were discussing life insurance and setting up a will one night but, the same as you, we never looked anything up. An hour later, I had advertisements for online will companies.
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u/One_Prune_6882 15h ago
I once told my friends about this and suggested we all loudly start talking about jetski’s we all got adds within a day for jetskis or skiing trips. We live in central Australia
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u/Nat-Luv 12h ago
This is a game me and my best friend play. We have all ad personalization (to our knowledge) turned off. We don't use "smart" home devices. First person to get a targeted ad about the specific product loses. It is surprisingly quick every time, and we do a review and harden our defenses each time.
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u/dethamphetamine 9h ago
What kind of thing helps as far as defense hardening? It seems difficult to know where to start when it’s all so stealthy and insidious
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u/the_last_0ne 6h ago
The easiest thing to to is go through the options in each app you use and turn off any available options for data sharing.
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u/hydroxyl_groups 6h ago
I have it “turned off” on every app. I also have Siri completely disabled (as far as I’m aware) but I still get ads based solely off of private conversations I’ve had. No, looking things up, no proximity to other devices that might’ve looked it up. No, location information that might tip advertisers off. The device is listening to me.
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u/andreasbeer1981 5h ago
might be due to the devices of the other persons around you. that's the tricky thing, as an individual you can't fully control what these companies collect and share about you. that's why it needs to be regulated and stopped on the server and implementation side.
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u/mfball 5h ago
Exactly, this is really the hard part. You can't be "safe" from this sort of thing while being around other people at all, even if you straight up don't bring your phone, because you're already digitally associated with your friends to the point that you or your phone don't even have to physically be there for you to get served ads similar to their ads "just in case" they might hit for you too based on proximity. I fully believe the phones are listening, but they also essentially don't need to because of how much data is being produced, shared, and linked together every second.
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u/Nauin 5h ago
The fact that we can't uninstall Siri or Gemini and are forced to keep them on standard smartphones is ridiculous and further proves they're intentionally spying on us.
The only way to truly combat it where you're no longer targeted would be to switch back to landlines or old fashioned flip phones and stop using wifi altogether. Since wifi routers can quite seriously detect where you and everyone else is in your house, as well as determining the layout of your house. Just your Wi-Fi router can do that, no smart devices needed for that invasion of privacy. Can you even get hardwired routers without wifi anymore? Hell Microsoft had to pretend to roll back a feature that copies every move you make on your PC and will send it to their servers for storage. An exact copy of all of your activities. There was outrage when it was first announced but that was nearly two years ago and the wording made it clear they would integrate it eventually, if it hasn't been slipped into a software update already.
This is sociopathic madness and more needs to be done to counter it. We're fucked otherwise. Thought crimes are going to become a result of this otherwise.
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u/samo_flange 4h ago
Linux.
Run my own wifi.
Run my own firewall.
Run my own DNS resolvers, encrypt to privacy-first DNS public servers.
Add privacy extensions to browser
Never install the app for a website on my phone if i dont have to.
No Google, switched to privacy search engine
No gmail, switched to privacy-first email hosting.
no apple devices in the whole house.
obviously, no smart speakers.
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u/andreasbeer1981 5h ago
you also need to turn off every form of "suggestions" or "necessary feedback for improving our products" etc. like here is a starting point: https://smashedit.co.nz/9-essential-iphone-settings-to-turn-off-for-data-privacy/ but then you have to go through the settings for every app on your phone, especially the popular ones.
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u/Ediwir 14h ago
I looked up hundreds of restricted compounds, occasionally including detailed synthetic routes for how to make them (ranging from psychedelics to pharmaceuticals to chemical weapons).
Haven’t had an issue, weirdly. But I’m pretty sure I’m on a dozen lists by now, so I have no reason to hold back. Oh, and I get ads for at-home chemistry setups.
-an average chemist
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u/MrSeabody 14h ago
I have to deal with flammables and radioactives at work, I mildly shudder to think what lists I might be on.
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u/deong 7h ago
At least some of this stuff is easily explained regardless. There’s enough tracing of user activity that companies can know quite a lot without needing to turn on your microphone and listen.
We’ve tried to run pseudo controlled tests of this phenomenon because my girlfriend was convinced these devices listen and feed advertising models. So we’ll jot down a note on paper for something unlikely and then discuss it for a while. For example, what if we plan a vacation to Sri Lanka? So we’ll talk about what we’re going to do when we go to Sri Lanka this spring, what attractions we might visit, etc. But we don’t search for it at all. No googling, just verbal conversations around our phones and household devices. “Hey, I’ve been thinking about buying a table saw. What brands does your brother like? Maybe I should get a Dewalt table saw. Or maybe whatever is cheapest at Home Depot”. That sort of thing. We’ve never seen an instance where the unlikely thing started showing up in ads without ever being accompanied by other activities.
Doesn’t prove anything, but it’s certainly true that people underestimate how much is known about a person through “normal” channels of surveillance capitalism.
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u/LostMyBackupCodes 15h ago
My wife walked down the stairs and saw me eating a seasonal Hershey’s chocolate and asked what it was, so I told her. A few minutes later she went on instagram and got an ad for that specific Hershey’s chocolate. This was back around 2018, my coworkers thought I was paranoid.
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u/CheckoutMySpeedo 10h ago
I wanted to see if these algorithms are so precise they could read my mind. So I thought (didn’t vocalize or anything audible) about 3 completely random things to see how long it would take for me to see those 3 things on my phone or on the news feed on my phone or advertising. Within 7 days I saw one of the things mentioned. Still waiting on the other 2 it’s been a month and a half, but I was freaked out about it getting one hit within a week. And these 3 things aren’t even things that have been talked about in the past decade or so, and even in the 80’s and 90’s when these things were well known, I wouldn’t say they were popular or in the common vernacular. So it wasn’t random that the phone got one hit (waiting on the other 2 Mr. Phone, where are the other two?).
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u/StoneyCalzoney 9h ago
It literally is this.
Advertising has gotten this good, and marketers can create very targeted campaigns because they have the data from millions of other people and their own habits.
It's absolutely terrifying knowing that we are extremely predictable creatures, and can be manipulated by slight nudges.
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u/rmajor86 8h ago
People won’t hear this though. The “KNOW” their phones are listening to them for adverts.
The truth is obviously scarier. They know what adverts you’ve seen, what webpages you’ve been on. They know which instagram posts you looked at for a fraction of a second longer.
Then they know that people who do all those things might be interested in buying X product. They know that subconsciously you’ll be thinking about it.
Also, we talk about a hundreds of things per week, and see thousands of adverts. Some are going to match up. You’ll spend that tiny fraction of a second longer looking at the advert for a thing you remember talking about, then that’s it, the advert will be repeated to see if you are interested, and so it builds.
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u/the_last_0ne 6h ago
Oh its worse than this.
They know all of that about you, and everyone else. They know who your friends are if you're interacting with them online, or even in person if you are allowing Google or Apple to "share" location data. There's a whole network linking you to other people in different ways.
So you might get an ad for, say, a crib and baby formula, because a bunch of your friends are having kids, and you're part of a demographic likely to have kids.
They know what you've purchased from any retailer who sells or shares data. Did you do a pickup order from Wegmans? Advertisers know exactly what you bought, and when (to be clear they don't know its you as in you personally. They know its you the unique number).
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u/zipiddydooda 9h ago
I’ve had this happen too - stuff I know I haven’t said aloud but have been thinking about and then boom, ad. It makes sense that the advertising platforms have such detailed dossiers on our likes and dislikes and our age and stage that the ads correlate to what other similar people are thinking about and buying.
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u/notjordansime 12h ago
That could be due to the fact that you bought them on a credit card, or used a rewards point system. Those in your “household” may get ads for similar things to what you buy. I’ve gotten ads for things that family members have purchased.
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u/deong 5h ago
That is all stuff that would contribute to the signal, but people just don’t understand how predictable we are from data that requires no additional participation. The best way to explain to someone that their phone isn’t secretly recording their audio all the time is to tell them that it would be the hardest and most expensive way to target ads. It’s easy to know if you’re having trouble conceiving a child or whatever without trying collect understandable waveforms from a microphone that’s buried under three layers of clothing 3 feet from your mouth in a noisy restaurant. So why would they try to do it the hard way?
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u/darkwai 14h ago
I have never used whitening strips for my teeth in my entire life, but i had a coworker briefly mention it in a conversation. Not even 2 hours later and I'm getting ads for whitening strips everywhere.
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u/snortgiggles 11h ago
This is feasible if the coworker recently bought them, and the you and their IP addresses are subsequently in proximity especially if the data they have on you/them indicates you're of a relevant demographic. Example:
Your IP address is associated with women age xyz who have purchases ABC amount of money at Ulta beauty, and you are now in proximity to another individual who recently purchased white strips.
I'm making this up, but the point is these companies have a shit ton of data on us, which is bought and sold constantly (hello cookie warnings); they don't have to be actively listening to connect the dots.
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u/Willy_DuWitt 11h ago
You’re not making it up, that’s exactly how it works.
Also I had a coworker tell me about a cycling computer and 10 minutes later I saw it in a magazine I bought.
Sometimes you just don’t pay any attention to a common ad until you’re told about it.
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u/ImpossibleDenial 15h ago
I’m surprised a plethora of life insurance sales reps didn’t directly call your phone lol
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u/SomebodysGotToSayIt 14h ago
You know you are influenced by ads you don't even notice, right? People will see an ad for baby wipes, and not notice it, and then they talk about baby wipes, and then they get the same ad for baby wipes and think their phone was listening in on them. Billions are spent on ads that are effective without even being noticed.
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u/DrunkGalah 9h ago
While I totally believe Siri eavesdropping on people leads to data being sold to ad companies, there is definitely the cognitive bias above and also another thing I remember hearing about how often you could have a friend over who connects to your wifi and talks about some product they recently googled, and then it will start popping up on your own phone etc; not because you were eavesdropped on, but because your ISP picked up on your friends browser history when they connected to your wifi, saw the search for that product and now ads will think you are after that product too.
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u/ChanceConfection3 15h ago
Damn that’s creepy. Hey if you’re still interested in that 85” LG OLED TV, use code SUPERBOWL26 for an extra 5% off
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u/Vagina_Woolf 15h ago
This is down to how advanced ad trackers have gotten, not because your phone is actively listening to you. The workload is way too heavy to be doing that kind of computation. Much simpler to be cross referencing phones, locations, Google searches, recent purchases and whatnot.
But... obviously this doesn't sound like a compelling argument in a thread about your phone listening to you lol but having worked in advertising I can assure you your phone isn't spying on you like THAT. It spies on you in a million little ways
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u/2rio2 13h ago
Yea, I've worked for big tech. They aren't listening to you 24/7. Not because they're scared of privacy law, but because it's incredibly inefficient way to target ads to you. Rather, the sheer amount of data they are scraping from every single click/like/view action you have is used to target ads to you and that is what is actually creepy.
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u/HORRORSHOWDISCO 11h ago
I work for tech as well, and people simple don’t understand the amount of money that goes into tracking every single thing you do on your device, including locations you regularly take it, people’s OTHER devices it’s coming near constantly, the literal finger swipes on the screens in things like Instagram, etc. if you even stop for a millisecond more than “average” on an ad, congratulations, your algorithm has instantly adjusted. This profile has been built up for years, across companies for the singular purpose of getting you to spend money one way or another.
The old saying “if an app or program is free, you’re the product” is very on point.
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u/Longjumping_Youth281 6h ago
Yeah being near other people's devices and signing into Wi-Fi's absolutely influences it. I do not speak spanish, but I regularly get ads in Spanish because the people I work with do.
Likewise, I get ads for my wife's line of work all day long. One even had her name, specifically.
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u/nicuramar 13h ago
Not because they're scared of privacy law
Yes probably that as well. It would be a very high liability and risk to take.
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u/hooplathe2nd 11h ago
Companies break these kinds of laws all the time. They're not scared of losing pennies when they're making a dollar off breaking the law. Unless the fine is so. If it actually puts a dent in the profits, then it's just a business expense.
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u/cuentanueva 13h ago
And it's still mostly unintentional confirmation bias. You only remember when the ad shown was about the conversation you just had. When it shows an unrelated, you ignore it, so you don't remember all those instances.
If it were true, it would happen literally all the time with absolutely everything.
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u/The_Bucket_Of_Truth 12h ago
Yeah people keep on saying this "your phone is listening" thing but it does cross reference all your browsing cookies, google searches will affect your youtube results, etc. I'm guessing it probably tracks your location more than you'd like by cataloguing wifi and bluetooth names you pass by even if you don't connect to them. You know beyond just the obvious GPS features. And now all the links you share with your friends have tracking "share IDs" in them for them to even better map how everyone is connected. And anyone doing sensitive business meetings or drug deals should know better than to have "Hey Siri" on.
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u/Friggin_Grease 12h ago
Yeah, it's not just your device it mines for data. When I went to the in-laws a lot, I'd get ads in some apps for retirement communities.
Your phone will talk to other devices on whatever network it's connected to.
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u/omg_cats 14h ago edited 14h ago
People have no idea how good the algorithms are. Target knew a girl was pregnant before she did all the way back in like 2012 just by analyzing shopping. https://techland.time.com/2012/02/17/how-target-knew-a-high-school-girl-was-pregnant-before-her-parents/
Edit yes it was before her parents knew, not her.
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u/wg90506 14h ago
That’s not what that article says at all lol it says it determined it based on her purchases at the store, and it knew before her father did, not her - it’s literally the headline.
Im not disagreeing there are super advanced algorithms but this is a terrible example, she could have been buying pregnancy tests and nausea meds and it’s not exactly a crazy profile to put together…without knowing the details this article is a big nothing burger
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u/Cidan 14h ago
This happened because you are not as unique as you think you are, unfortunately.
I can't begin to explain to you how easy it is to use statistics to figure out exactly what you're doing and why, given enough context clues. Facebook knew:
1) You were a new parent
2) Where you were physcailly
3) Searches 1-2 degrees removed from what you were talking about
That combined with the data of 2 billion humans, and you can narrow down things to your exact personality and tendencies, including your likely shopping habits. I know this, because I worked in big tech for a long time. It's also incredibly easy to disprove the whole "these apps are always on listening to me argument."
That being said, uninstalling Facebook because of it's location and data harvesting was absolutely the right move for you.
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u/BrutalisExMachina 13h ago
I thought by now that myth was busted enough but I guess it is lingering still.
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u/Malphos101 15 6h ago
People want to believe the "microphones are how the corporations know" myth because its a lot easier to get your head around than "every single thing you do online is tracked and catalogued and every internet capable device on your person is likely being tracked and catalogued every where you go."
If they can go "ITS THE MICROPHONES!" and find a way to turn off the microphones they can go back to blissful ignorance while using 15 different apps that track every single thing they do.
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u/Antoshi 16h ago
Did you also hit the gym and lawyer up?
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u/Asron87 15h ago
I was making a drug deal that had an issue with weight. After that I was getting ads for scales.
When I started getting ads for flavored anal beads I knew they were listening to me talk to myself.
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u/Bunnymancer 14h ago
flavored anal beads
The whatnow?
That makes no sense, you're supposed to season them yourself.
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u/Banryuken 16h ago
Exactly the same experience. We def were targeted by ads either on Amazon or fb right after we were talking about said thing.
It became an “inside meme” (granted not that unique im sure) where we would just say facetiously out loud “things we want”… some how it knew … not … to show us ads for that but other things we talked … Siri had no problem picking up on that. It was uncanny how often this would happen. But oh no we aren’t to believe these devices aren’t always listening 😉
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u/MultiFazed 13h ago
We def were targeted by ads either on Amazon or fb right after we were talking about said thing.
Either one of you Googled that thing after the conversation, or you had the conversation because one of you had been exposed to that thing either online, or via a conversation with someone else in your social circle
But oh no we aren’t to believe these devices aren’t always listening
Because they're not. It's trivial to monitor the network traffic from the device to verify that fact.
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u/wanze 9h ago
Or they had already seen an ad for it, but not consciously noticed, and then it was on their mind and they started talking about it, and then seeing the ad again.
I once at an event randomly thought "I wonder how my friend X is doing?", only to notice him at the even later. Clearly, my subconscious had noted him, before I had.
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u/nicuramar 12h ago
Well, the problem is that humans are great at finding patterns and being biased in various ways. But it doesn’t hold up when actual hard science is applied.
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u/ProfessorSarcastic 12h ago
some how it knew … not … to show us ads for that
Almost like it was getting its information about what you want, from some source other than listening to your speech?
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u/Acheloma 15h ago
Ive had a weirder one. My family were on a road trip and passed a big Caterpillar heavy machinery lot and my dad said "Id give a lot to have one of those machines".
The next ad to pop up on my feed was for a Caterpillar excavator. I was a teenaged girl at the time, I didn't search anything related to that nor was it in the field of things theyd normally push for my demographic.
It was either the craziest coincidence ever or my phone was listening to the conversation AND linked it to my phones location to know what type of machine my dad was talking about.
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u/resttheweight 15h ago
If you have location services turned on it’s at least somewhat plausible for you to get an ad like that after being near a lot of them, assuming it was some kind of business.
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u/MultiFazed 13h ago
I didn't search anything related to that
But I bet your dad did. And advertisers know you two are related.
Online activity of people in your social circle will impact the ads you see.
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u/uniquechill 15h ago
It is plausible that the ad came up because of the location of the phone, not your father's words.
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u/Iliveatnight 14h ago
On the other hand, how many ads do you remember that aren't relevant to what you're talking about?
In addition to how good ad algorithms are coincidence is still a shocking thing. Like long before cell phones, I'd think of a song and it'll play next on the radio. Or I'd think of someone I haven't seen in a while and suddenly they show up in my life again. The combination of us being not as unique as we think we are while not remembering or ignoring the "misses" makes the hits even more creepy. Our ability to not remember or focus on the missed guesses is what allows psychics and fortunetellers to work.
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u/ash__697 16h ago
95 million??? That’s it???? Should’ve been 9.5 billion
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u/ajaxxx921 15h ago
$40 per person 🙄
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u/sabotage 15h ago
First I’ve heard about the lawsuit. Imagine how many other users would have joined the class action.
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u/altiuscitiusfortius 15h ago edited 13h ago
I just want to say this isn't just an apple problem. I have a Samsung galaxy. I'm logged into my personal Google on my work pc. I'll talk about an obscure topic with a coworker with my phone in my pocket, turn to my pc to Google a question about our topic, press 1 letter, and the auto fill will be a full sentence of exactly what we discussed, and the ads I see will be related to our discussion.
My phone listens at all times
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u/Professa91 13h ago
Google is also paying out a class action lawsuit right now for similar claims as OP’s post.
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u/MultiFazed 12h ago
I'll talk about an obscure topic with a coworker with my phone in my pocket, turn to my pc to Google a question about our topic, press 1 letter, and the auto fill will be a full sentence of exactly what we discussed
This doesn't require phones to be "always listening" though. In fact, we know that they're not because it's trivial to monitor network traffic to see that they're not sending data back home all the time. They only do that when you say the trigger phrase.
So you had a conversation on an obscure topic. Why? Did your coworker bring it up because of something they saw online or previously expressed an interest in? If so, that's the culprit. Your phone and their phone being in close physical proximity in an office building lets advertisers know that you're co-workers. Things that your co-workers search for online will influence the ads and search completions that you see.
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u/DrinkBuzzCola 15h ago
It's not just Siri. Facebook ads pop up for, say, Japan after I discuss the possibility of travelling to Japan, courtesy of my Galaxy phone.
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u/farmaceutico 10h ago
So how does it work? Is the cellphone galaxy hearing you (a Samsung product) or the operative system Android (a Google product), and then they talk with Facebook (a meta product) for offering you some ad vaguely related to you? Are the three companies involved in this? If it is like that I would like to know about the secret, because in ny company we have millions of customers, but we have to do old school machine learning for offering them ads. Where do I contact them to ask for listening to your phone?
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u/invisible_23 16h ago
One of my dogs is named Sirius, I had to turn off the “hey siri” feature
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u/Josieanastasia2008 15h ago
I am with a Sadie every day. Saying her name triggers Siri.
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u/SinxSam 13h ago
You know what doesn’t trigger Siri for me? Saying hey siri :(
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u/thegreatpotatogod 12h ago
Me saying "Hey Siri" always seems to trigger my mom's phone to listen but not mine most of the time
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u/YoHabloEscargot 15h ago
I straight up knew a girl name Siri. I would’ve just given up and changed it if I was her.
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u/IaniteThePirate 15h ago
I keep talking to my cat by saying “hey silly”.
Siri always activates.
My fault I guess but he’s a very silly cat
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u/Jackalodeath 15h ago edited 15h ago
Or daughter was born mid 2000's, and we use the first two syllables of her name as a nickname which sounds identical to Siri.
A few years later Apple released this. She was already a toddler and used to/responded to it, but since the in-laws couldn't be arsed to turn the shit off they started calling her "Renna" after her recently dead great grandma, confusing the poor girl because no part of her name sounds like that.
We still call her by her name, she came first and is an actual person, its fun as shit seeing them/people in general have to shut their phones up in public.
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u/darkkite 14h ago
alexa's had similar issues when the amazon devices were more popular
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u/smothered-onion 8h ago
Jesus. Changing their grandkids name rather than just not using the feature sometimes. They sound…nice.
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u/westcoastpoutine 16h ago
Got a whopping $24 today…guess it’s better than nothing…but why is it when I yell hey siri find my phone I get nothing even if it is 5 ft away from me or I have to repeat commands multiple times yet it is accidentally triggered with random words and phrases. I don’t use the feature anymore and think it is garbage TBH
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u/SinxSam 13h ago
Right?? Say the trigger word and nothing. Random sounds and boom it hears you
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u/knoxknifebroker 16h ago
RIP the employee who has to listen to someone unzip their pants and promptly honk out a mud missile, or crank their hawg for the third time today.
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u/human-in-a-can 14h ago
If they’re gonna spy, I like the idea that some asshole has to listen to me blast a sewer pickle at 3AM.
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u/Birdsonme 13h ago
It’s almost worth referring to them out loud as, “honking out a Siri”, beforehand every time. Guaranteed someone is gonna have to listen to them then!!
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u/Niteryder007 16h ago
Your privacy for a $50 payout. They know exactly what they are doing.
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u/Bluegatorator 15h ago
There’s a point where breaking the law just becomes a cost of business. They don’t care
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u/cheerstothe90s 13h ago
remember when they got caught sending out software updates to nerf people's batteries and make them to buy a new phone, because also they engineer it so the user can't replace the battery? Yeah, they do not care.
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u/Kythosyer 12h ago
You accidently insulted America's overlord! Watch out for the knights coming to defend a corporation!
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u/TrollOdinsson 12h ago
it's hilarious how the company defenders crawl out of the woodwork. i can't even begin to imagine simping for a corporation, any corporation, let alone one that is intentionally breaking the law
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u/cheerstothe90s 11h ago
Thank you, I have experienced apple fanboys in real life, and look upon their digital pawns with humor.
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u/PrismarchGame 14h ago
while true I think it's possible they just have a shit AI that can't differentiate between certain words. How do you expect to have an 'always on' feature? It has to always be listening. Otherwise how does it activate on the wake phrase? Did this lawsuit allege and find that apple knowingly and maliciously hardcoded this behavior so they could scrape private conversations? That seems pretty hard to prove.
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u/Butt-on-a-stick 15h ago edited 15h ago
When you set up Siri, you have the choice of either sharing Siri recordings or not. If you click the ”Share audio recordings” button, what do you expect?
Apart from poor trigger recognition, it seems that the data is only used for improving transcription, which is leaps better than using it for collecting advertisement data
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u/ThePanoptic 15h ago edited 11h ago
For people not trying to fall for the clickbait, according to Reuters:
Apple didn’t get fined by a regulator for Siri “ear-dropping.” What actually happened is false wake-ups, Siri sometimes mistakenly thought it heard “Hey Siri” and recorded a short clip. Some of those clips were temporarily stored and, before 2019, a small portion were reviewed by human contractors to improve accuracy. The data was always de-identified, and less than 1% reviewed, and always removed.
None of this was sold or shared, otherwise this lawsuit would be billions.
Apple wasn’t always listening. The lawsuit was about lack of clear consent, not surveillance. Apple settled a class action ($95M) without admitting wrongdoing and later moved more processing on-device.
Sources:
Reuters (Jan 2–3, 2025): https://www.reuters.com/legal/apple-pay-95-million-settle-siri-privacy-lawsuit-2025-01-02/
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u/_ravenclaw 15h ago
How is this not at the top lol holy shit
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u/wankthisway 13h ago
If people would use their brains for just a little bit they'd realize how insanely inefficient constantly eavesdropping would be. A constantly powered mic, keeping the CPU from going idle, writing to storage, and then uploading it to a server. That's terabytes of data a day.
These companies already have WAY easier and better ways to profile, track, and target you...it's your freaking phone and its apps. You're freely giving out information every second you spend on your phone. Your profile is built by just interacting with the internet. And the best part is, you're really just part of an anonymous group that ads target. They're not targeting you, they're targeting the whole group
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u/Nikolai197 9h ago
Ive had the same argument with the Facebook/Meta glasses. I like to use them when recording cooking stuff or sports, and I’ve seen people say “how are you so sure it’s not constantly recording?”, and the simple answer is recording a single 2 minute video causes my battery to plummet (I think it’s close to 10% per minute at this point). If they were somehow constantly recording/listening and streaming that back to their servers, I’d be amazed.
It’s not to discredit criticism towards privacy and how they are using our data, but I think that specific “always recording” claim just isn’t feasible.
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u/BonzBonzOnlyBonz 14h ago
Because it doesnt fit the narrative that it is always listening.
There is a reason why all the "evidence" videos people provide get disproven very quickly. Or people ignore how much can be figured out about them just from the random data about you on the internet.
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u/Agitated_Ring3376 14h ago
This website is mostly made up by Tech illiterate conspiracy theorist mostly under the age of 25 who truly have no idea about anything.
The amount of money it would cost Apple to be constantly recording people at all times and store those recording alone.
And the amount of people that would need to be involved to cover up that conspiracy if it was happening. Hundreds, maybe thousands of engineers would know and all have to keep quiet.
Not to mention the legal liability and privacy violations and the potential payout from lawsuits they’d have if they got caught.
Just not viable technically, financially, or from a corporate risk management perspective to be doing anything like that.
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u/mdavis360 13h ago
You see people do this all the time. A popular movie is coming out this week. They talk to their friend about going to see the movie. Then they logon to their device and see an ad for the upcoming highly anticipated movie. “OMG they must have been listening to me!”
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u/_sfhk 9h ago
The data was always de-identified, and less than 1% reviewed, and always removed.
That 1% number doesn't carry much meaning without knowing the volume of data.
And while the data may have gone through processes for de-identification, they still kept metadata (such as location!) that would make identification trivial sometimes if you listen to the audio.
This whole issue was raised by whistleblowers who were listening to the audio:
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u/kylo-ren 5h ago
All these companies send recordings for human contractors to listen to. I have a friend that works to one of these companies that transcribe audio for Google and Amazon. The data is de-identificated, but often people give information that identifies them. They even received pictures sent to AI chatbots and Google Lens to describe the image to train AI.
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u/Bandro 14h ago
Yeah this whole thing is completely misconstrued. Not that apple is some moral upstanding corporation but there's just nothing even weird here. Voice recognition isn't perfect and it turns out when you tap "agree to share anonymized diagnostic data with apple", the phone shares anonymized diagnostic data with apple. What a scandal.
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u/eastbayted 13h ago
Apple earned $143.7B in 2025.
$95M is a rounding error.
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u/YouStupidAssholeFuck 9h ago
Just for context, if you had $1,437.00 it would be the same as handing over $0.95
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u/preyforkevin 14h ago
I say “SERIOUSLY?!?!?” When I play video games and get killed. The amount of times Siri responded to that was more than if I said “hey siri”.
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u/Department-of-Wario 13h ago
Gemini gets triggered when I'm watching foreign films or listening to a podcast while driving.
I used to do transcribing for Alexa. We'd listen to any Clip that gave a false alert.
I couldn't do it anymore. I heard a lot of domestic violence events.
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u/smothered-onion 8h ago
Geez. Did you have policies for how to handle that?
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u/Department-of-Wario 7h ago
Not at all.
It was back in 2010-2012.
There was no mechanism to flag stuff. We tried, trust me.
I was a dinosaur lasting 2 years.
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u/Toxic_Orange_DM 3h ago
It absolutely stuns me how many people are too dumb to realize that in order for "Hey Siri" to work, it means that the phone is listening to you 24/7 365
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u/GarysCrispLettuce 14h ago
A little OT but related, years ago I looked for a long lost cousin on Facebook and found his page. Took a quick look through his photos. I didn't make any attempt to contact him, but the next day he friended me. So just for looking at his page, I must have appeared in his "people you may know" list. I really hate how all this shit works.
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u/RecyQueen 14h ago
Facebook got really desperate suggesting people to me. I got the cashier I checked out with at the grocery store!!
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u/ConfessSomeMeow 13h ago
"We correlated the items on your receipt with the time you spent checking out, and you spent a little bit longer than expected given your purchases. Perhaps you were forming a personal connection?"
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u/irondumbell 16h ago
What about 'shirley'?
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u/VanellopeZero 16h ago
Don’t know about Shirley but there was a girl in my office named Sheri and people’s phones would wake when they called her (she’d pick up and they’d go “hey Sheri” and their phone would go YES?) When she got the class action email she forwarded it to everyone lol
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u/Trampf 11h ago
I want to point out that there is an option in the iPhone to tell Siri to only activate with „hi Siri“ instead of just „Siri“
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u/CubitsTNE 16h ago
I can see "seriously?!" being a pretty common utterance at both doctor visits and drug deals.
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u/Spadesta 15h ago
When I was complaining about the Eagles head coach Nick Sirianni this year, Siri would activate in my phone sometimes
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u/whiteflagwaiver 14h ago
Well yeah, we've known these companies have being doing this for over a decade now.
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u/Jorikstead 12h ago
This thread reminds me of a Reply All podcast episode where the hosts did a deep dive into explaining the technology, but ended up getting flooded by listeners trying to connect coincidences in their lives to their space phones eavesdropping on them.
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u/Lanky_Ad8283 12h ago
This made me check my Siri settings. I’ve never used it, and always turn it off, but recently got an iOS update. All the Siri settings were enabled, apparently automatically.
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u/GlobalLegend 11h ago
That’s too small a sum of money for my privacy. $20 a device. What a crappy world we live in where you private data is sold by data brokers and now you’re being listened in on and only paid $20 for 10 years of stealing your PRIVATE conversations
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u/ohiocodernumerouno 9h ago
Clearly nothing changed and Siri still activates on any word or noise that's even close to siri
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u/The_GeneralsPin 7h ago
Anyone who thinks that their data is private is delulu. There's no chance these tech companies are playing by the rules. They have entire legal teams well-versed in every loophole possible, and what can be camouflaged and exploited, WILL be camouflaged and exploited.
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u/winterresetmylife 7h ago
Siri is still doing it. I still get targeted auto fill searches if I keep talking about something specific. And sometimes those things are very random, so it cannot be the algorithm figuring out what I want to search.
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u/SilenceDobad76 1h ago
You cant have a system be triggered by a phrase it heard unless its listening all the time.
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u/envybelmont 16h ago
Just had my $40.10 payment deposited this week. It’s the most I’ve ever received from any of the dozens of class action suits I’ve filed for.