Just a scary tidbit of information for iPhone 4S owners, regarding the digital assistant Siri.
Steve Troughton-Smith, the same developer busy porting Siri to all iOS devices, very recently tweeted that every time you deal with Siri and make a request, she sends Apple your GPS location together with your query, even if it’s a non-mapping request.
This sucks. I thought Apple swore they were not tracking us any more after the April tracking-saga! I’ve never thought about it but I guess it makes sense: when you ask for the nearest Seven Eleven, Siri needs to know where you are, right?
But the question is, how long is Apple keeping those GPS locations for? Are they immediately discarded after Siri’s reply? I doubt that.
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November 6, 2011 at 6:18 am
“every time you deal with Siri and make a request, she sends Apple your GPS location together with your query, even if it’s a non-mapping request.”
And how, exactly, is Siri supposed to know whether a request requires location data or not before the request has been interpreted?
The part of Siri that lives on your phone is DUMB. All it does is send your voice recording to the AI in the data centre.
It could be done, of course:
User makes request
Phone sends request through to data centre
AI interprets request, notices location data is needed
AI requests location data from phone
Phone sends location data
AI receives location data, retrieves original request, combines the two and interprets the question again
AI sends answer to phone
Instead, we have
User makes request
Phone sends request and location data through to data centre
AI interprets request
AI sends answer to phone
Can anyone see the overhead involved in not sending the location data right away? More time, more bandwidth. How long are you prepared to wait for Siri to answer?
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November 6, 2011 at 5:56 pm
Good point. The question is: are you ok with Apple gathering your data?
I’d be happier if I could choose whether to share my location with Siri or not, knowing that if I decide not to I won’t be able to submit location based requests.
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November 7, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Settings, Location Services, Siri: Off.
Happier now?
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