Apple's Siri Listens to Your Drug Deals and Sex Life

TL;DR - A class action lawsuit alleging that Apple was listening to its users without consent is being settled for $95M, with Apple claiming it is not actually at fault. The lawsuit cites a 2019 whistleblower who was tasked to review Siri recordings and discovered they get accidentially triggered all the time.

When you ask Siri if it’s listening to you, it gives you a matter-of-fact response, “Only when you’re speaking to me.”

We now know … that’s a lie.

Lopez v. Apple filed in California federal court, accuses Apple of listening to people’s conversations without consent. Apple has claimed no fault but is settling the lawsuit for $95M.

Anyone owning a Siri-enabled device from 2014 could join the class-action lawsuit here. You must have experienced an unintended Siri activation during a private conversation. You can do this for up to 5 devices.

We can thank the heroic Siri whistleblower who was tasked with reviewing Siri audio recordings for quality control and decided to blow the whistle. Contractors regularly heard drug deals, confidential medical information, couples having sex, and more.

Anything coming out of your mouth can accidentally trigger Siri, beginning an audio recording. And these recordings are accompanied by location, contact details, and app data.

The whistleblower also pointed out that Apple Watch and HomePad smart speakers are the most frequent sources of unintended recordings.

As always, there’s no way to remove Siri from Apple products—it’s baked in! Siri is your best friend whether you like it or not.

You can try to disable Siri on your iPhone by doing the following:

• Disable Siri voice activation in your settings by going to Settings > Siri > Turn off “Listen for Siri”

But because iOS code is proprietary, we can’t be sure that this actually prevents all audio capture.

Solutions:

1. Throw your Siri-enabled device in the trash.
2. Switch to a phone that respects you.

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