Is Apple Using Siri to Spy On iPhone Users?

IBM (NYSE:IBM) is banning Apple’s (NASDAQ:AAPL) voice-activated digital assistant on its networks due to the fact that a log of conversations with Siri goes into Apple’s black hole of information, also known as Apple’s data center in Maiden, North Carolina.

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According to Apple’s iPhone Software License Agreement, “When you use Siri or Dictation, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text.” There is no explicit time limit on how long Apple stores the data it collects from your conversations with Siri.

The American Civil Liberties Union recently put out a warning about Siri, reminding users of how much very personal data they are sharing, often unknowingly. Worries about privacy as technology advances are not unique to Apple — Google Inc. (NASDAQ:GOOG) has also been hounded over the storage of information retrieved from users’ searches.

According to some, IBM may have singled out Siri due to the program’s ability to write e-mails and text messages. The use of Siri to write messages would give Apple access to sensitive and potentially confidential data about IBM. Additionally, though much speculation remains about how Google handles privacy issues, the company did recently concede to “anonymizing” search results, giving users a modicum of privacy.

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