Apple Reveals For How Long Siri Remembers Your Data

Have you ever used Siri? There are a lot of people using Siri among iPhone owners, asking her all kinds of questions. If you are one of the people constantly using Siri (and even if you are not), have you ever wondered just how long does Siri keeps all of your data on its servers? This is a very good question (good enough to ask Siri about it), a question to which we now have an answer as Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller explained to Wired that Apple keeps your data on its servers for a period no longer than two years.

Many people have asked the same question. The main concern is that intelligent personal assistants, such as Siri and Google Now, store people’s voice clips on the company’s servers. In the event of a security breach, the whole thing might transform into a nightmare as third parties will have access to user’s private voice clips. Apple responded that not only the data is stored on the servers for only two years, but it is also anonymized (more on than later). Other companies that store data either gathered by intelligent personal assistants or directly, companies such as Google or telecommunications giants, also  use the two years policy in regards to stored user data.

After a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union talked posed a few Siri privacy questions and after an article on Wired that also raised concerns about “some fuzzy disclosures in Siri’s privacy policy“, Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller explained the two year policy. According to Muller, Apple is only gathering data in order to improve Siri and the voice clips are anonymizied: “Apple may keep anonymized Siri data for up to two years. If a user turns Siri off, both identifiers are deleted immediately along with any associated data.“. Apple’s spokeswoman concluded saying that “Our customers’ privacy is very important to us”.

Also, it seems that after the voice recording is over six months old, your user number will be “disassociated” as Apple will delete it from the voice file. However, as noted, Apple still keeps these “disassociated” voice files for another 18 months, to test and improve Siri.

The American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns about Siri privacy through its lawyer Nicole Ozer. She would like Apple to include privacy information on the Siri FAQ page, as many people are concerned about their privacy. In Nicole Ozer’s own words “There is no good reason for Apple to not include information about privacy practices on their Siri FAQ page”.  For now, you can find the policy regarding Siri privacy only in the Siri Settings of your iPhone or iPad. While more and more people divulge personal information when using Siri, Nicole Ozer warns that “Siri works for Apple, so make a note to yourself to really think before you speak.”. IBM used the same argument, that Siri works for Apple, when it banned Apple’s intelligent personal assistant on its own network in March 2012, fearing that Siri may log private information.