Great, Siri was recording people even when they opted out

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A bug in Apple’s latest mobile operating system, iOS 15, inadvertently recorded Siri interactions for “some users that had opted-out previously.” Apple says it has already fixed the bug with the release of iOS 15.2.

The bug occurred during the release of iOS 15. Apple found the issue, put privacy measures into place, and issued a fix with the release of iOS 15.2.

Apple hasn’t said how many devices were affected. That said, even if it’s a small percentage of the total number of devices running iOS 15, over a billion iPhones worldwide are used daily, so any number is likely to be large.

The bug only affects those users on iOS 15, iOS 15.1, iPadOS 15, or iPadOS 15.1. You’ll want to update your devices to fix the issue.

With iOS 15.2, we turned off the Improve Siri & Dictation setting for many Siri users while we fixed a bug introduced with iOS 15. This bug inadvertently enabled the setting for a small portion of devices. Since identifying the bug, we stopped reviewing and are deleting audio received from all affected devices. – Statement Apple provided to ZDNet

If you’re not on iOS 15 or iPadOS 15 yet; you might want to update your devices to gain all of the new features and security fixes. Here’s how to do that for your iPhone and your iPad.

Again, users on iOS 15.2 or iPadOS 15.2 already have the fix installed.

With the upcoming release of iOS 15.4, Apple will once again ask users if they want to help improve Siri and dictation. That’s what happened to me when I updated to the beta version of iOS 15.4 yesterday.

That said, going forward, the setting should (hopefully) respect your choice and only send recordings if you have opted-in.

Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Joe Rice-Jones

Maker, meme-r, and unabashed geek with nearly half a decade of blogging experience at KnowTechie, SlashGear and XDA Developers. If it runs on electricity (or even if it doesn't), Joe probably has one around his office somewhere, with particular focus in gadgetry and handheld gaming. Shoot him an email at joe@knowtechie.com.