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Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

arstechnica.com

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Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#71

Post by robdachshund »

Aloha wrote: post #31
bredren wrote: post #25

This may be tangential but I’m regularly amazed at how bad Siri is at basic things still. I’ll try to use it for things in front of guests on the HomePod and Siri is embarrassing half of the time

I've never quite gotten the allure of voice assistants myself, it just seems like a really frustrating way to use a computer.

Seems like a great way to have zero privacy whatsoever for something that adds very little convenience to your life, if it even works correctly.

The whole thing just grosses me out. It's sad that the big companies are pushing this as their newest "innovation".

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#72

Post by orbital-decay »

paulcarroty wrote: post #29
romwell wrote: post #2

> “These recordings are accompanied by user data showing location, contact details, and app data.” This should be in the title. Media was focusing on contractors listening to Google Assistant snippets not long ago — and those were anonymized . Private and identifying information was in the snippets, not metadata (the article mentioned this).

> and those were anonymized Hard to believe for Google context. They always trying to get the max possible data.

It's a very relative concept. You can always omit some part of the record pretending you're "anonymizing" it, while the rest is easily correlated with a particular person.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#73

Post by bitreality »

blub wrote: post #69
panpanna wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Many HNers have a weird belief that Apple is somehow a privacy focused company Note how the top comments here branch into criticizing Google? It takes a lot to change people's opinions in such matters. It just easier to repeat the same old same old arguments and continue with our lives...

Google is the worst at privacy. Even when Apple or any other company fucks up it's always worth noting that, maybe it dents their undeserved reputation even more.

Arguing over which tech behemoth is worse at privacy is pointless. The fact is that they are incentivized against privacy. Your data is valuable. The cost of anonymizing your data is expensive, and offers little measurable ROI.

Some companies work on providing the illusion that they care about privacy. But at the end of the day, unless it's convenient for them, and does not interfere with their goal, you should assume the worst.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#74

Post by dhimes »

freehunter wrote: post #9
hug wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Siri activates almost any time I say “are you serious?!”, which is a phrase I say with some regularity. I’ve definitely had it activated a number of times by the TV or when watching YouTube or Twitch.

I had it trigger while watching an episode of Archer. I even went back and played it a few more times to double check it wasn’t a fluke.

I no longer see a way to turn Siri "off", only to not respond to "hey Siri" but rather the home button. Does this mean she's not listening unless I've activated, or is she listening anyway? (I can't seem to help anthropomorphizing Siri it seems...).

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#75

Post by schuke »

benj111 wrote: post #48
eitland wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In fairness gp says less than 1%.

I would expect 'less than 1%' to be 0.1% to 0.99%. 0.1% is still a high figure.

I would bet it’s closer to 0.99% otherwise wouldn’t they have phrased it something like “slightly more than 0.1%” to make it sound smaller?

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#76

Post by kdmccormick »

matt-attack wrote: post #27
droithomme wrote: post #8

If Siri reviewers encounter evidence of certain crimes such as murder, sex trafficking, pedophilia, or domestic abuse, it is obvious they have a basic moral duty to report the crime and turn over the evidence to investigators.

As an aside, it’s highly ignorant to refer to pedophilia as a “crime”. Please be aware that pedophilia is not in fact a crime at all. It in fact refers to the attraction one had toward pre-pubescent children. Be aware that this is entirely different than being a child rapist. I assume you meant to say “child rapists” in your statement. In the same way it’s generally accepted that homosexuals and heterosexuals don’t c…

"Child rapist" is pretty specific. Consumption/distribution of CP is also heinous and harmful.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#77

Post by kemayo »

j2bax wrote: post #60
Aloha wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their datacenter for Chinese customers are in china. I expect them to take reasonable precautions, mistakes do get made. I'm not a user of voice assistants, I'd rather use the device directly, its faster anyhow. To quote from the article "Voice assistants appear to be yet another instance where a technology has been developed and adopted faster than its consequences have been fully thought-out."

There are at least a few instances where using a voice assistant is far faster than using the device directly. An example that I use frequently is something like “hey Siri remind me to change my furnace filter in 3 months”. In many cases using a voice command/shortcut is quicker than navigating to an app and locating the ui to do it.

I'm particularly fond of "hey Siri, when I get home remind me to take out the trash" as a shortcut.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#79

Post by Symmetry »

schuke wrote: post #75
benj111 wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would expect 'less than 1%' to be 0.1% to 0.99%. 0.1% is still a high figure.

I would bet it’s closer to 0.99% otherwise wouldn’t they have phrased it something like “slightly more than 0.1%” to make it sound smaller?

If I was talking to a reporter and the real number was .01% I would still say "less than 1%" to make sure I was properly understood. The whole reason we use percentages and say "one percent" instead of "point zero one" is that some people tend to get confused with decimals but not with integers.

EDIT: And part of this is just how we say things. "Twenty" is just easier to parse in a conversation than "Two Oh" even though the later is perfectly comprehensible when written out.

Re: Siri records fights, doctor’s appointments, and sex, and contractors hear it

#80

Post by ben_w »

sorokod wrote: post #70
ben_w wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it sometimes. For household use I pretty much agree: my partner has Alexa set up to turn lights on and off, and it only works about 70% of the time. Apple doesn’t, I think, say it’s Siri which is running this keyboard which I am using right now to “write” this content, but I assume the voice recognition engine is the same one, and it’s significantly more useful than Alexa. For example the only edits I have made…

"my partner has Alexa set up to turn lights on and off" Do you really need the help of a megacorp to turn lights on and off?

No, but it does feel very Star Trek.
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