Reddit User confirms Siri/Cortana transactions are recorded

http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2wzmmr/everything_youve_ever_said_to_siricortana_has/

by benbristow • 11 years ago

94 35 11 years ago

reddit.com

Irishsteve• 11 years ago

You can check the audio that Google stores out in - https://history.google.com/history/audio

error54• 11 years ago

You can check out where you've been as well - https://maps.google.com/locationhistory/b/0/

FLUX-YOU• 11 years ago

Other useful things that were posted in that thread:

https://www.google.com/settings/takeout

https://www.google.com/settings/dashboard

ebbv• 11 years ago

A more accurate title would be "Reddit user claims Siri/Cortana transactions are recorded." He doesn't supply any proof.

LLWM2• 11 years ago

If someone claimed the sky was blue, would you require them to provide proof before believing them?

lolsal• 11 years ago

Yes. My observations count as a type of proof.

adricnet• 11 years ago

Objection: argumentative.

And yes, if the claim didn't match with my observations I would expect that they have or be prepared to provide proof in some reaonable form. "Extraordinary claims .." and all that.

hawleyal• 11 years ago

This story is old. The user is just confirming it by his experience.

s3r3nity• 11 years ago

Only "recorded" in the sense that your Google/Bing/Yahoo searches are "recorded," or your browsing history is "recorded". You don't think your Google Now voice searches aren't?

I knew that my searches were probably tracked when I started using Cortana (similar to any other search - unless you're using DDG,) and personally I'm ok with it if it results in a great experience for me. And I'm amazed almost daily at how solid Cortana (and Google voice search for that matter) is.

cortesoft• 11 years ago

It is a BIT different to keep a voice recording, because you can recognize a voice recording, unlike a written sentence.

falcolas2• 11 years ago

Not to mention the recording of your surroundings, and audio from before and after the query.

Such a recording contains quite a bit more than your average search engine query.

SilasX2• 11 years ago

I'm confident that the usual wiretapping laws will be enforced in this area, just as if an ordinary citizen recorded someone's phone call.

glomph• 11 years ago

Not only does Google keep the recordings they will let you listen to them if you go on search history. https://history.google.com/history/audio?

ibejoeb• 11 years ago

I was under the impression that this was common knowledge. Here's a 2-year-old article about it in Wired: http://www.wired.com/2013/04/siri-two-years/

---

Once the voice recording is six months old, Apple “disassociates” your user number from the clip, deleting the number from the voice file. But it keeps these disassociated files for up to 18 more months for testing and product improvement purposes.

“Apple may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years,” Muller says “If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data.”

---

toomuchtodo• 11 years ago

“Apple may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years,” Muller says “If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data.”

Would these mean turning off Siri every week/month and then turning it back on would prevent long term storage of your voice data?

ntumlin• 11 years ago

That's assuming they actually delete the data though.

RandomBK• 11 years ago

If Apple "disassociates" the data, how can they delete the files when a user turns Siri off? Doesn't that imply they still know which piece of data belonged to a certain user?

manicdee• 11 years ago

1) Apple deletes associated data when the user turns Siri off.

2) Apple dis-associates data after six months.

1 & 2 = data older than six months is not deleted, bit is not directly associated with you. So that Siri search for that topic only of interest to communist homosexual terrorist Jews will not have your user ID but might still be identifiable from voice analysis.

You can't escape Macarthyism that easily.

TylerH• 11 years ago

No; they don't disassociate the time it was recorded, only the phone number.

chippy• 11 years ago

I think the main thing from this claim is that the audio is shared with third parties.

frik2• 11 years ago

Apple Siri uses Nuance speech recognition technology; afaik Siri run on their server at launch.

It seems they outsourced tasks to another company to improve the speech recognition. The classification task that the Reddit user does can be used by Nuance to improve their data.

As another Reddit user mentioned that after doing the job for a while you will start recognizing speakers: http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/2wzmmr/everythin...

billyhoffman• 11 years ago

There are hundreds of millions of iOS and Android devices out there. If someone is starting to recognize voices, it supports a common sense reaction that a subset of voice commands are being used for QA/QC purposes to improve accuracy.

speechduh• 11 years ago

Uhm, yes, duh. Isn't this common knowledge? How do people think speech recognition systems are trained? What's more upsetting is that this person is so uninformed about speech systems that they think this is weird, AND they have access. The only people who should have access are the people who are actually doing science.

Ahhh. Reading clarified it: this is someone who got hired to do transcription.

"I'm given an audio file (sound bite) and the corresponding text based translation (how the phone translated the speech). My job is to listen to the file, compare it to the text and provide feed back on how correctly the sound bite was interpreted by the phone. If the text and speech are a perfect match, I just move on. However, if the phone either translated something incorrectly due to a heavy accent or loud background noise, I note that in my evaluation. "

krick• 11 years ago

Well, yeah, it might be common knowledge for some, but many don't know, don't care and I enjoy every time it's "revealed" by some community over and over again.

But seriously though, is there a way to do something with Android phone (like using third-party firmware, removing some programs, configuring firewall) to be somewhat sure it's "safe" while still being usable?

bdcravens• 11 years ago

Title says "Siri/Cortana", yet a large amount of the discussion revolves around the saved history for Google Now: https://history.google.com/history/audio

Reddit User confirms Siri/Cortana transactions are recorded

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