111–120 of 227 posts
One of the thing with Tim Cook's Apple is the smell of Hypocrisy. I am giving Apple's the benefits of doubt, and they will need to explain this better.
So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…
All Apple devices that support Hi Siri play a notification and display lights or a UI when it activates and starts sending data outside of the device. I don’t see what more they can do. Of course a device that listens for an activation phrase is going to listen. And it’s never going to be 100% accurate. If you can’t accept that, just set it up so it only starts listening when you press the button.
Where Apple explicitly asks you whether you are willing for your data to be used to improve a variety of services and you can opt-in or opt out. Apple dropped the ball by not specifically including Siri as a separate item in the list. Bad Apple.
So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…
It still surprises me that so many people either don't care or are ok with this. Then there are those that do care but still use this stuff which absolutely baffles me, especially on hacker news. People I work with have to do various types of training on handling lots of private data and the risks of what happens when that data is not handled properly or worse and yet they give away so much without a care in the worl…
So #1 reason is definitely the fact that most people don't know what the company is actually doing because the company goes to great lengths to hide and mislead about that fact.
Now, for those who do know or assume that this was happening all along but yet still continue to use something like this, I think it's because they like the feature and find it convenient and they CHOOSE TO BELIEVE THAT THE COMPANY CAN BE TRUSTED.
So #2 is a matter of wrong expectations and being too trusting in entities that care nothing more than to do things that make them more money. If there is one thing you should trust about a company is that its #1 incentive is to make money - everything else is an direct consequence of that.
So far, most of the comments here are a good example of both why this happened and why it will happen again. When people complained that putting microphones in your home 24/7 was creepy, the response was "that's nonsense, Siri is not sending anything unless you specifically ask for it". When it turned out that it does send things you didn't intend, the response was "well, it's not like anyone is listening anyway". No…
> We really need mandatory ethics courses in CS. Voice recognition isn't really possible without someone listening to train the system. If the option is "don't have a voice assistant at all" or "have a voice assistant that sometimes has a human listening", I suspect the public would mostly choose the latter. When you call a company helpline and get connected to a human rather than a robo-voice, most people are happy…
I'd like a citation for that. I don't think assistants are such a significant feature in most people's lives that they couldn't live without it. Sure, people with various handicaps may find them super useful, but that's different, for the same reason I or most people don't need the hidden and usually disabled by default accessibility features in operating systems.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Then don't ask them and let them explicitly toggle the option to share information. Is incrementing a counter if an app crashes a privacy invasion?
Yes, because you get a bunch of meta information when any device of mine uses my internet connection to connect to your servers to increase that counter. If you save that information or not, you created a trail. I expect from any app that it doesn't establish any connections per default to be honest. You can have that as an option that I can enable if I feel like it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> When this story broke, I dipped into Apple’s terms of service myself and, though there are mentions of quality control for Siri and data being shared, I found that it did fall short of explicitly and plainly making it clear that live recordings, even short ones, are used in the process and may be transmitted and listened to. The implications of what they agree to are impossible to understand, by design. They're cra…
That's one thing I like with GDPR. It has to be informed consent for a lot of cases. Can't hide it and say you agreed to whatever in a hidden EULA.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one thing I like with GDPR. It has to be informed consent for a lot of cases. Can't hide it and say you agreed to whatever in a hidden EULA.
The cookie warnings mostly end up being meaningless “WE NEED COOKIES TO WORK CLICK OK” on every website.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, because you get a bunch of meta information when any device of mine uses my internet connection to connect to your servers to increase that counter. If you save that information or not, you created a trail. I expect from any app that it doesn't establish any connections per default to be honest. You can have that as an option that I can enable if I feel like it.
Ok, so what if the app is internet connected and has to communicate with some central server? Think a non-p2p messaging app, or an app for a bank/ ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's one thing I like with GDPR. It has to be informed consent for a lot of cases. Can't hide it and say you agreed to whatever in a hidden EULA.
The cookie warnings mostly end up being meaningless “WE NEED COOKIES TO WORK CLICK OK” on every website.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
All Apple devices that support Hi Siri play a notification and display lights or a UI when it activates and starts sending data outside of the device. I don’t see what more they can do. Of course a device that listens for an activation phrase is going to listen. And it’s never going to be 100% accurate. If you can’t accept that, just set it up so it only starts listening when you press the button.
I'll tell you what they can do and what they should have done. If, on your iOS device you go to Privacy > Analytics you will find this: https://imgur.com/a/LTV9bGc Where Apple explicitly asks you whether you are willing for your data to be used to improve a variety of services and you can opt-in or opt out. Apple dropped the ball by not specifically including Siri as a separate item in the list. Bad Apple.