Last week, Apple agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit that alleged unlawful and intentional recording of Siri interactions. Apples settlement has led to a wave of conspiracy theories claiming that Siri is listening to you for targeted advertising, but the company says those claims are completely unfounded. Siris privacy controversyAs a refresher, the lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 report in the Guardian that revealed Apples use of contractors to grade Siri interactions. The whistleblower in the story alleged that those contractors would regularly hear private interactions from users as part of their work providing quality control for Siri. At the time, Apple quickly responded to the allegations by saying that less than 1% of daily Siri activations were used for grading and that those activations were typically only a few seconds long. The interactions were also bound by Apples strict confidentiality agreement and were not associated with a users Apple ID.Apple also subsequently announced several changes to Siris privacy protections in a post on Apple Newsroom. The big change was that, by default, Apple no longer retained recordings of Siri interactions. Instead, users could opt-in to help Siri improve by learning from the audio samples of their requests. Apple also said that only Apple employees would be allowed to listen to audio samples of Siri interactions, not third-party contractors and any recording that was determined to be an inadvertent trigger of Siri would be swiftly deleted. Is your iPhone listening to you to show you ads? Nope.Fast forward to 2025, and Apple agreed last week to settle that 2019 lawsuit with a $95 million payout to users. In a statement to 9to5Mac today, Apple said it settled the case so it can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. The company says that Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles, and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose.Here is the full statement from an Apple spokesperson: Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.Last weeks news spawned a number of unfounded conspiracy theories using Apples settlement as evidence that your iPhone is always listening to you and spying on you for means of targeted advertising. Apple tells me this is absolutely not the case, and what you share with Siri is never shared with advertisers.Apple says it repeatedly denied allegations throughout the lawsuit that Siri recordings were used to target advertisements, and no evidence was presented to suggest otherwise. In fact, Siri interactions are tied to a random identifier that lets Apple keep track of data during processing. Those interactions are not tied to your Apple Account, phone number, or any other identifying information. After six months, that request history is also unlinked from that random identifier. All of these details (and more) are emphasized on Apples website on a webpage dedicated to Siri and Dictation privacy.Additionally, you can manually review and delete Siri transcripts directly in Settings. Just go to the Settings app and look for the Siri & Dictation History option. Some Siri requests are also handled entirely on-device. For example, if you ask Siri to read unread messages, it does so by simply instructing your iPhone to read your messages aloud. The content of the message is not sent to Apple servers.For Apple Intelligence features, Apple also emphasizes its use of Private Cloud Compute. ApplesPrivate Cloud Compute infrastructureis built on its own Apple Silicon chips and is open to third-party researchers to ensure privacy protections. 9to5Macs Take All this to say, the headlines making the rounds suggesting that this lawsuit is evidence your phone is always listening to you are nothing but unfounded conspiracy theories. In fact, it is quite literally impossible that your interactions with Siri are being used for targeted advertising with the privacy protections that Apple has put into place.This, of course, doesnt excuse Apples reactive rather than proactive approach to the situation that first arose in 2019. Apple shouldve had more privacy protections in place before then, and it shouldnt have taken a whistleblower for it to respond. The system shouldve been opt-in from the start. Nonetheless, Apple has continued to double down on Siris privacy protections since then.Follow Chance:Threads,Bluesky,Instagram, andMastodon.Add 9to5Mac to your Google News feed. FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.Youre reading 9to5Mac experts who break news about Apple and its surrounding ecosystem, day after day. Be sure to check out our homepage for all the latest news, and follow 9to5Mac on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay in the loop. Dont know where to start? Check out our exclusive stories, reviews, how-tos, and subscribe to our YouTube channel