Apple suspended the quality assessment program of its voice assistant Siri, which, secretly from users, could turn on sound recording and then transfer this data to the company's contractors. This decision is said in a company statement.
“We suspend the evaluation of the work of Siri around the world for the time of a thorough analysis. In addition, in the future software update, users will be able to make their own decisions about participating in this program, ”the statement text leads The Verge.
The company also claims that confidential recordings were used to improve the performance of the voice assistant, allegedly using Apple to improve the performance of the speech recognition algorithm. The statement says that the analysis is conducted in “safe conditions”, and all partners who get records must “comply with Apple’s strict confidentiality requirements”.
Recall that in late July, one of the contractors Apple told The Guardian talked about how Apple records the confidential conversations of its users. The publication stressed that we are talking about the conversations of owners of Apple equipment with doctors, business negotiations, the purchase of drugs and even records of how couples have sex. This data is transmitted along with the contact information and the location of users.
“There were countless cases of records showing private conversations between doctors and patients, business transactions, at first glance, criminal relationships, sexual contacts, and so on. These records are accompanied by user data with location, contact and application data, ”an Apple employee told The Guardian.
This is due to the fact that Siri sometimes works by chance, he said. According to him, a combination of sounds similar to the command “Hey, Siri” (in Russia, “Hello, Siri”) is enough. Moreover, in the Apple Watch it is enough just to raise a hand so that Siri starts recording the user's speech, the publication’s source stressed.
"The regularity of random responses on the clock is incredibly high ... The clock can record some fragments that will last 30 seconds," an Apple employee added.
"Fear of harm to reputation"
At the same time, Apple turned off the campaign only when the public became aware of this, noted mobile expert Yevgeny Senin. In his opinion, in this way the company tried to save its reputation.
“It was rolled up because big companies in America are very afraid of harm to their reputation, especially as regards privacy, especially after the scandal with Facebook. Even if the recordings are anonymous, even if it is impossible to track the holders of the votes, it is easier to suspend the program until the media hype settles, ”he said in a conversation with RT.
If this information did not become public, it is likely that Apple would continue to record against the will of users, says leading analyst of the Regional Public Center for Internet Technologies Urvan Parfentiev.
“Most likely, Apple curtailed the program after problems were revealed, when it became public. Perhaps, as a result of internal monitoring, such problems did not emerge or didn’t come to light, but at least when the incident became known, appropriate measures to protect user privacy were taken, ”he told RT.
Parfentiev is convinced that Apple has curtailed the program for fear of losing customers - according to the expert, the concept of user privacy has gone beyond the legal framework and has acquired particular importance in the competition.
“The situation with privacy is connected not so much with legislative restrictions, - it is heavily loaded into the brains of users. The user perceives any service that violates his privacy as unsafe and starts migrating from it, which affects the economic and financial performance of the developer or distributor of such a service. Therefore, in this case we are talking not only about following some sociocultural norms, but also protecting our business interests, ”he added.
"Users can not turn off the entire Siri"
Similar scandals occurred with other large American IT-companies. So, in early July, the media reported on a similar situation with the voice assistant Google Assistant. However, it is possible to disable the background listening function there. And in April, the scandal touched on Alexa assistant from Amazon, who also recorded confidential information. However, Alexa can also disable this feature.
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“Siri users and Apple products cannot disable Siri entirely, realizing that there is some threat to its confidentiality, while other manufacturers have more fine-tuning of voice assistants, which allows more functions to enable and disable,” said RT Cybersecurity Agency head member Expert Council of the State Duma Committee on Information Policy, Information Technologies and Communications Evgeny Lifshits.
At the same time, users themselves should be aware that voice assistants in their devices can record their conversations and transmit confidential data to third parties, Parfentiev is convinced.
“A user who uses such services must clearly understand that voice services may pose a threat to their privacy,” the expert said.
Senin agreed with him, who noted that users often do not read the terms of the license agreement. In addition, he stressed that at the moment, voice assistants have modest capabilities, and therefore corporations are eavesdropping on conversations in order to develop their product.
“Even now they (voice assistants - RT ) do not shine with the mind, and their use at this stage is insignificant - set the alarm clock, turn on the light in the smart house. Another serious problem is the random triggering of voice assistants, which happens quite often, ”he explained.
"Opportunities to gather information"
With regard to Russia, this is not the first scandal involving the Siri voice assistant, Lifshits recalled. So, in 2017, it became known that fraudsters could give voice commands to Apple devices (even in a locked state) in order to send money to Sberbank customers via SMS. At the moment, the bank’s website contains a call to disable Siri when the screen is locked in the IPhone settings.
According to Lifshits, similar omissions in software have been before, but now the brunt is on the users' personal data.
“It was always, the software and hardware and software systems in general, they leave room for collecting information on analytics, statistics, system errors, leave the ports for updating. These problems were always, just recently the personal data were in focus, ”he told RT.