According to Wired privacy advocates popped into the company to establish exactly what information it knows and keeps about users. It found that the company was surprisingly open about the data it was collecting. Apple spokeswoman Trudy Muller said the anonymized data is collected solely to improve the service, and that the company takes customer privacy “very seriously”.
Voice clips stored by Apple are categorised by random numbers to represent the user who recorded it. The number is not associated with an Apple ID, email address, or anything else that could be easily personally identifiable, she said. After six months, the random number is no longer associated with the saved clip, but the audio file may be saved for up to two years in total for what Wired said were "testing and product improvement purposes."
If a user turns off Siri on their device, their randomised identifier is deleted, along with any data associated with it. Siri’s use of data has caused problems for Apple before. The fact that Siri data must be sent to Apple before it can provide results has worried those who are concerned about Apple’s security.
Last year IBM barred the use of Siri on its corporate networks, out of concern that sensitive information could leak.
