Is Siri Safe to Use?

Technology is evolving and we keep relying on it. Recently, there has been an increase of the popularity in digital assistants which execute functions on your phone or computer.

Every large service offers a digital assistant. One of such assistants is Siri and it belongs to Apple. Every modern Apple device has Siri as an option.

We tend to use technology so much but we don’t often stop to ask, is it safe? Let us examine what we know and see whether Siri is safe.

Apple Says Yes

Every company will want to stand behind its product. Apple stands behind Siri and says that it is as safe as it could be. Apple is not known for having data leaks or security breaches, but that is to be expected, their system being as close as it is.

While we can criticize Apple for having a completely closed ecosystem, that makes it safer than most systems. Nobody can view the source code. But, this only works if we decide to trust Apple. Here is why.

Privacy and Information Gathering

Every company nowadays wants our information. When we use our phone, we give out information to almost any company whose services we are using. The two main phone system providers, Apple and Google, gather tons of data on basically everything we do. The same can be said for Microsoft on their Windows operating system.

Even though companies say that they are committed to privacy, they have tons of data on millions of people throughout the world. A tiny data breach and who knows how many people’s data is compromised, leading to another point.

Siri Is Relatively Safe

Any assistant is as safe as you make it out to be. If you can train an assistant to only respond to your voice, then it is a bit safer than if it responds to any voice. 

Siri has permissions to make calls, send messages and post on social media. If you enable it to do these things with your phone locked, then you open yourself to vulnerabilities.

A good way to avoid this is to disable Siri when the phone is locked. Siri can be safe to use if you have good security practices.

Digital Assistants Collect More Data

Like most services, digital assistants also collect data, but in this case, data from our voice. To some people, that is really concerning. Transparency on how companies collect and store data is what is lacking in today’s digital world. 

If you trust Apple with your data, then Siri is as good of a choice as any other digital assistant, and in some cases, better than others. 

Siri is safe, as long as you practice common sense when using your phone. However, large companies collect lots of data and using a digital assistant allows them to collect even more data. 

The risk might not be with Siri itself, but with the entity behind Siri, Apple.