Funny Things To Ask Siri Get Stored In Apple Data Center For Two Years.

iPhone users love coming up with funny things to ask Siri, Apple’s digital assistant with a penchant for dryly funny answers to absurdist questions. Ask Siri where to hide a body and it just may direct you to the nearest quarry. But it turns out Apple hangs onto your queries in its giant data center for up to two years, meaning it has a record of every stupid, dangerous, or illegal thing you’ve (jokingly or otherwise) asked Siri since the technology arrived in late 2011. But if that news leaves you suddenly panicked about whether your wife is going to know about your penchant for strip clubs or some other secret you’ve asked Siri for help with, the news isn’t as dire as it sounds.

Siri’s data centers hang onto the information because it allows the mass of computerized servers to more accurately figure out what users are asking. If you’ve ever wondered why Siri is more able to accurately interpret your request about Led Zeppelin than about some band no one has heard of, it’s because Siri gets so many questions about Led Zeppelin each day that it stands a better chance of figuring out that’s what you were saying even if you were slurring your words while traffic whizzed noisily by behind you. While Apple hangs onto Siri queries for long periods of time, it does so anonymously: the database may keep track of the fact that eleven thousand users asked about Purple Monkey Dishwater last month, but it doesn’t keep a list of which eleven thousand users.

That’ll come as a sigh of relief to those iPhone users who have been spooked by the Wired headlines revealing that Siri does in fact hang onto all the asinine things you ask it for a couple years. Don’t worry: Apple’s naughty and nice list of Siri queries is anonymous. So feel free to resume asking Siri to tell you a joke without fear that the rest of the world wil find out just how bored you were when you asked.

www.stableytimes.com