Protect your privacy and stop Siri from hearing everything you say with these tips and tweaks.
Privacy is one of the most important areas in the technology industry. More and more companies are jumping on the technology bandwagon. collection of user data for commercial purposes. You have probably noticed on several occasions that advertisements appear related to what you say or do.
In fact, most of the applications installed on your iPhone collect the information collected using the microphone of your device. Annoying fine print that we accept when we approve each app’s request for microphone access permission.
Although Apple seriously cares about the privacy of its users, the company also asks the Siri access to microphone and collects data to “improve its services”. Fortunately, there are a number of iPhone settings to avoid the active listening from Siri and many other third-party apps that take advantage of both what we say and our location to send us personalized ads.
- Settings to prevent Siri from starting active listening
- In conclusion
Settings to prevent Siri from starting active listening
If you want to protect your privacy, we recommend changing these settings for Siri and other system apps or services. Remember, only if you want to protect your privacy. If you do not mind sharing your data anonymously, we invite you to continue using the functions with which it is linked, which, of course, are very useful.
Siri Suggestions
We start with one of the Siri functions that seems most harmless but actually invades your privacy. We talked about Siri suggestions. Apple collects information about how you use your apps, what searches you do on your device, what type of content you share, and even how you use the keyboard.
Siri analyzes how you use your devices to offer you Personalized suggestions and more precise search results. In theory, data is stored locally on the device. However, Apple warns that they receive “limited” information without identifying your name, account or files.
- Open Settings on your iPhone and iPad.
- Then access the section Siri and search.
- Disable features Allow Notifications, Show in App Library, Show When Sharing, and Show When Listening.
Hello Siri
The Hey Siri feature is one of the most useful features not only of the virtual assistant, but of every Apple device. Although it’s a little uncomfortable at times – it was activated accidentally several times while I was writing this article –, is a great help when it comes to activating functions such as turning on the living room lights, sending a message on WhatsApp with Siri, searching the Internet or calling a contact when you don’t have your iPhone, iPad or Mac within range tomorrow.
Now though, The “Hey Siri” feature always remains active in the background. This means Siri is constantly listening to what you say, waiting to be activated to helpfully offer help. Although it is practical, remains a risk to privacy. And beyond that, consumes a large amount of energy of your device’s battery. In fact, this is one of the iOS settings we recommend turning off to save iPhone battery.
- Enter Settings.
- Join a Siri and search.
- Disable the option Activate when you hear “Hey Siri”.
Improve Siri and dictation
This is one of the most problematic privacy features on iPhone and iPad. This has caused Apple a lot of problems in the past and allowed Apple to be forced to include an optional setting so users could decide whether to use it or not.
Improve Siri and dictation stores audio data –Apple does not specify whether it is transcribed as text files or audio files– to improve the performance of Siri and other functions through analysis by Apple employees.
Help improve Siri and Dictation by allowing Apple to store and review audio of your interactions with Siri and Dictation from this device.
- Open Settings on your iPhone or iPad.
- Then access Privacy and Security.
- Enter the section Analysis and improvements.
- Disable Improve Siri and dictation.
Additionally, from here you can also opt out of the collection of other types of data related to your iPhone usage, security, location, and iCloud services.
In addition…
Remember that every time you download and install a new app on your iPhone It will ask you for permissions to access your photos, microphone, contacts and camera. Please keep this in mind. Accept or deny permissions depending on the app. If you do not want your data to end up on servers for later commercial sale, deny all permissions.
On the other hand, and to conclude with these confidentiality tips, we invite you to delete your interaction history with Siri and voice dictation every certain period of time. This will remove information about your searches, Siri commands, translations, and other language processing functions from Apple servers.
- Open Settings on iOS and iPadOS.
- Enter the section Siri and search.
- Go to the section History and dictation of Siri.
- Press the button Delete Siri and dictation history.
In conclusion
Please note that if you turn off many privacy settings on your device, you will not have access to many operating system features specifically designed to improve your daily life. We we try to maintain a good balance when it comes to privacywith some enhancements disabled and other analytics enabled to help Apple continue to improve its great products.
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