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Oh, Apple Siri absolutely listens to your conversations and targets you too. I have personal experience of this in India where Siri on my friend's iPhone "overh

Oh, Apple Siri absolutely listens to your conversations and targets you too. I have personal experience of this in India where Siri on my friend's iPhone "overheard" our conversation about apps on app store and started showing very specific ads on my mom's iPad (on which Siri was disabled) app store. (This was around the time when Siri was first launched. And I suspect that they are more brazen about this in countries with lax to no privacy laws - both my friend's and my mom's iDevice was bought and activated in the middle-east).

iguana_lawyer 3y ago
It doesn’t have to be Siri itself. Any app that Apple gave access to the Siri private API could have done this.
callalex 3y ago
Are you sure that wasn’t simple IP-based targeting because you or your friend was browsing the App Store? When suspecting conspiracies, it’s usually the dumb simple answer that is correct.
- dharmab 3y ago
  I worked in AdTech for a while, and this happened all the time. 1. People are more predictable than they think they are, and 2. People remember the times the ads were well targeted and forget the other 10,000 irrelevant ads.
  - smartis2812 3y ago
    I think this a is very important take-away most people underestimate.
  - webmobdev 3y ago
    I am talking about specific PR campaigns based on our conversation, not ads about specific apps. Please see my other comment. (And while I haven't worked in AdTech, I have experience with Print and Internet advertising.)
- webmobdev 3y ago
  Yes, 100% sure because we weren't discussing any specific apps. We were discussing in-app purchases in games and how it is unethical of Apple to encourage such kind of games on the App Store simply because they make more money for them. Suddenly I find Apple is promoting the "buy / pay once" (don't remember the exact PR campaign) games on the App Store. (What an amazing co-incidence!). It was, I am sure, one of the many PR campaigns created - after spying on people through Siri - to get people to actually buy apps on the App Store instead of only using the free apps. (I am one of the few who has never been attracted to giving Apple App Store mine or my mom's CC as India has so many better digital payment options that better protect our rights legally, and am loathe to the whole concept of "App Store"). There were two more incidents like this when we were subjected to very specific Apple PR campaign that were very suspiciously based on conversations I had with some Apple fans in my family (the kind who immediately call me up to find out when I am going abroad next so that I can buy them the latest iDevice).
  - dharmab 3y ago
    > Suddenly I find Apple is promoting the "buy / pay once" (don't remember the exact PR campaign) games on the App Store. (What an amazing co-incidence!) I get those promoted in the app store, too. Probably because they can tell from my purchase history that I don't like microtransaction based games. Seriously, when I was in AdTech I saw how the proverbial sausage is made, and listening to your conversations would be been way less effective than predicting your habits based on other data and geographic location.
gruez 3y ago
>I have personal experience of this in India where Siri on my friend's iPhone "overheard" our conversation about apps on app store and started showing very specific ads on my mom's iPad (on which Siri was disabled) app store. (This was around the time when Siri was first launched According to wikipedia siri was launched 11 years ago. If this is happening on a serious scale surely you'd be able to provide a more recent anecdote than from "around the time when Siri was first launched"?
- bennettnate5 3y ago
  Not the original commenter, but here's a more recent anecdote: My wife and I were staying at a family farm outside the US for several weeks during Covid lockdowns. We had data turned off since our plans would charge us hefty fees for international roaming. One day we took a walk outside WiFi range and I was explaining how grain augers operate, since we were walking to a few old rusted ones. About a half an hour after we get home, she shows me some advertisements on her iPhone for new grain augers. Could it have been the IP address we were on? Perhaps, but the owner of that family farm no longer farmed for a living and hadn't been looking into purchasing new machinery for more than a year; to add to that, we had been there two weeks prior with no farm equipment advertisements.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - aaomidi 3y ago
    Apple will use location services to serve ads to you. If you were walking near old ones, and others had searched about them before (not you) the graph database would create an association between location and grain augers.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  You assume that I continued using Apple devices. After that experience, I disabled Siri, iCloud, etc. on my mom's iPad and personally have never bought any new Apple devices.

iguana_lawyer 3y ago

It doesn’t have to be Siri itself. Any app that Apple gave access to the Siri private API could have done this.

callalex 3y ago

Are you sure that wasn’t simple IP-based targeting because you or your friend was browsing the App Store? When suspecting conspiracies, it’s usually the dumb simple answer that is correct.

dharmab 3y ago
I worked in AdTech for a while, and this happened all the time. 1. People are more predictable than they think they are, and 2. People remember the times the ads were well targeted and forget the other 10,000 irrelevant ads.
- smartis2812 3y ago
  I think this a is very important take-away most people underestimate.
- webmobdev 3y ago
  I am talking about specific PR campaigns based on our conversation, not ads about specific apps. Please see my other comment. (And while I haven't worked in AdTech, I have experience with Print and Internet advertising.)
webmobdev 3y ago
Yes, 100% sure because we weren't discussing any specific apps. We were discussing in-app purchases in games and how it is unethical of Apple to encourage such kind of games on the App Store simply because they make more money for them. Suddenly I find Apple is promoting the "buy / pay once" (don't remember the exact PR campaign) games on the App Store. (What an amazing co-incidence!). It was, I am sure, one of the many PR campaigns created - after spying on people through Siri - to get people to actually buy apps on the App Store instead of only using the free apps. (I am one of the few who has never been attracted to giving Apple App Store mine or my mom's CC as India has so many better digital payment options that better protect our rights legally, and am loathe to the whole concept of "App Store"). There were two more incidents like this when we were subjected to very specific Apple PR campaign that were very suspiciously based on conversations I had with some Apple fans in my family (the kind who immediately call me up to find out when I am going abroad next so that I can buy them the latest iDevice).
- dharmab 3y ago
  > Suddenly I find Apple is promoting the "buy / pay once" (don't remember the exact PR campaign) games on the App Store. (What an amazing co-incidence!) I get those promoted in the app store, too. Probably because they can tell from my purchase history that I don't like microtransaction based games. Seriously, when I was in AdTech I saw how the proverbial sausage is made, and listening to your conversations would be been way less effective than predicting your habits based on other data and geographic location.

gruez 3y ago

>I have personal experience of this in India where Siri on my friend's iPhone "overheard" our conversation about apps on app store and started showing very specific ads on my mom's iPad (on which Siri was disabled) app store. (This was around the time when Siri was first launched According to wikipedia siri was launched 11 years ago. If this is happening on a serious scale surely you'd be able to provide a more recent anecdote than from "around the time when Siri was first launched"?

bennettnate5 3y ago
Not the original commenter, but here's a more recent anecdote: My wife and I were staying at a family farm outside the US for several weeks during Covid lockdowns. We had data turned off since our plans would charge us hefty fees for international roaming. One day we took a walk outside WiFi range and I was explaining how grain augers operate, since we were walking to a few old rusted ones. About a half an hour after we get home, she shows me some advertisements on her iPhone for new grain augers. Could it have been the IP address we were on? Perhaps, but the owner of that family farm no longer farmed for a living and hadn't been looking into purchasing new machinery for more than a year; to add to that, we had been there two weeks prior with no farm equipment advertisements.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- aaomidi 3y ago
  Apple will use location services to serve ads to you. If you were walking near old ones, and others had searched about them before (not you) the graph database would create an association between location and grain augers.
webmobdev 3y ago
You assume that I continued using Apple devices. After that experience, I disabled Siri, iCloud, etc. on my mom's iPad and personally have never bought any new Apple devices.