Yes, I know, as soon as you read that title you thought, yeah right.
You’ve heard too many stories of your friends or friend’s friend who has been festooned with ads for tents just hours after talking about camping with a friend with the phone sitting on the bench between them. And anyway, didn’t Apple just admit to this very practice and pay $95 million to settle it out of court?
Let’s start with the last thing first. Yes, it is true, Apple just did pay $95 million following allegations that they were taking snippets of Siri requests and selling them to advertisers.
However, Apple stressed that this payment was NOT an admission of guilt and actually denies the claim.
So why did they pay? Why not fight it?
Well, that’s a good question and I don’t really know the answer. However, doing a little digging and you discover that this claim comes from a discovery back in 2019 when Apple was found using snippets of Siri to train the its AI. This was widely controversial, and Apple was, and quite rightly so, criticised quite severely for this. Their fault wasn’t so much that they were using these ANONYMOUS snippets to train the AI, but rather they never told anyone that’s what they were doing.
The result in 2019 was an apology and a new dialog during the install process that allowed you to opt-in or out of this recording practice. Something that should have been done on day one if you ask me. So for most of us, this was enough, but for some it seems they needed $95 million to make it all better.
But this doesn’t translate into the claim that they were selling this info to advertisers then or ever.
This claim has been made for years and covers all brands of phone and tablets and not that I needed any, but there have been several investigations into the subject of eavesdropping, and none of them have come up with any evidence. And besides, the practice makes no sense anyway.
If Apple or Google did eavesdrop, who are they listening to anyway? You the phone user, or the ramblings of your friend who loves to bore you to the point of scooping out your ears with a chainsaw for their love of four-wheel driving and Microsoft Excel?
How much money would they waste sending ads for tents and Excel courses? Or are they listening to a Tom Cruise movie while the phone sits with you on the couch? Why would you want ads for rocket fuel or platform shoes? They wouldn’t waste their time and money on such an inaccurate, costly option. What they would do instead would be, surprise, surprise, what they actually ARE doing.
People search all the time. Recent estimates suggest there were 8.5 billion Google searches done every day and that’s just one way you enter info a computer, phone or tablet that is combined, packaged up, and sold to the highest bidder (via google mainly). It has become second nature and often you aren’t even aware that a simple search on YouTube for a video on horses will be rolled into a Google ad for stables.
Picture this. You are sitting at the bar, chatting with a friend about engine oil. He says he bought it for $4 a litre, and you don’t believe it. You pick up your iPhone and confirm it, congratulate him on his ability to spot a bargain and go on with your conversation. This fleeting search will now be analysed and turned into ads that appear in Google or YouTube. While this is creepy but understandable, all you recall is your friend was talking about engine oil.
So please, relax, your phone is not listening to you.
Besides, if it were, the CIA would have broken down my door long ago.
