Apple is holding onto your Siri data for two years

My current phone is an iPhone 4, so I still have not had the distinct pleasure of being introduced to voice assistant Siri. We only know each other through reputation, and hers, honestly, isn't that great. Still, plenty of people use the service, and Apple was always a pretty cagey about what exactly happened to the data it was collecting from those searches.

For whatever reason, Apple has finally decided to spill the beans. A day after Wired wrote an article in which it noted that the ACLU was raising some concerns over Siri's privacy policy, Apple came out and revealed to the website exactly what happens to that data.

Whenever a user makes a request to Siri, that data is sent to Apple's data farm to be analyzed. It keeps the data anonymous by generating a random number. The recording will be associated with that number for six months, after which Apple disassociates the file from the number. The number gets deleted, but the voice file is kept for another 18 months, to help Apple refine and test Siri.

That means that Siri voice files are kept for two years. If a user decides to turn Siri off, though, all the identifiers, and the data, will be automatically deleted.

While this disclosure is a step in the right direction, the ACLU is still unsatisfied. Their initial concern over the matter came from a section of the Siri Privacy policy, which reads, “Older voice input data that has been disassociated from you may be retained for a period of time to generally improve Siri and other Apple products and services."

ACLU lawyer Nicole Ozer told Wired that she would like to see Apple put that Privacy policy directly on its Siri FAQ in order to give the customer as much information as possible before they buy a new Apple product, or decide to use Siri. Indeed, most users probably never even realized that their voice searches were being kept by Apple at all, let alone for two years. Nor did they know that they had any way of stopping Apple from harvesting that data.

Of course, the Siri Privacy policy is not being kept secret or anything. It can be found within the Siri Settings section of an iPad or iPhone, but I'm sure few people realized that either.

Siri was initially released in October 2011, and was first supported on the iPhone 4S after being purchased by Apple in April 2010. It was then added to the third generation iPad with the release of iOS 6, and is included on the iPhone 5, fifth generation iPod Touch, fourth generation iPad and the iPad mini.

The service has not been without its share of controversy before.

Five months after Siri was released, a poll taken by Parks Associates showed that only 55% of people who used the service were happy with it. What that was still much higher than the 9% who said they were dissatisfied, but it also left a lot of people who, frankly, seemed unimpressed with the virtual assistant.

The survey also found that 87% of people have used Siri in some capacity, most of them only used it for basic functions, like phone calls and text messages, while neglecting the other features that come along with the service.

Then, in June of 2012, a man named Frank Fazio sued Apple, claiming that Apple had engaged with false advertising when it came to Siri. The lawsuit contended that Siri did not perform as advertised and, therefore, the iPhone 4S is the same thing as the iPhone 4, only more expensive.

Apple could not be reached for further comment, and we will update if we hear anything further.

Source: http://vator.tv/news/2013-04-19-apple-is-holding-onto-your-siri-data-for-two-years

Note:

Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes articles on Yelp Data Scraping, Linkedin Profile Scraping, Yellowpages Data Scraping, eBay Product Scraping,  Website Harvesting, IMDb Data Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping, Tripadvisor Data Scraping, Linkedin Email Scraping, Screen Scraping Services and yellowpages data scraping.

Web Scraping: A Breakthrough in Data Harvesting

Why should data be harvested? This is one of the rare questions that cab is asked to an internet user. Harvesting the right information by using our web scraping service you are assured getting the accurate information you are looking for. Web harvesting can be an expensive venture. This can be looked at hiring a lot of resource to do data mining in your company. These costs have been reduced significantly by outsourcing the web scraping services to the loginworks experts.

It is important to note that the internet is a huge store data from all over the world. This information can vary from text, media or any other binary information. The information displayed by different web pages can be displayed in different formats and therefore posing difficulties in its harvesting. Getting the access to this data is surely critical and guarantees success to the different business. It is also of eminent importance to realize that the uses of information gathered obtained from web scraping both for personal and business requirements are limitless. You have your own need for certain information and therefore the same applies for other companies. This article will explore just some of the scenarios in this case. This articles details and focuses on how this web scraping services and the information you want in well-structured manner and how this information can be used as a breakthrough in data mining.

1.       Data analysis. Any company needs to analyze and collect data that is relevant to a particular niche or from a particular website. You domain may be real estate, electronic gadgets, automobiles and even industrial equipment’s. This information can be found in different formats in many websites that are of interest. It is possible to know that you may have a chance of getting all information from a website without the need browsing every page. This data may be spanned across different websites.  By using a web scraping services you are guaranteed all the data whether free or hidden in any websites you want. Getting all this data it is easier to analyze and even visualize the data.



2.       Research. I have never heard of research minus data. Whether you are from academic, scientific or marketing field it is important again to remind you of the solicited support that can be provided by the data. For instance if you are doing a research in the academic field you need information that is well structured from a wide variety of sources with a lot of ease. With the wen scraping service by loginworks you are assured of a lot of information. It is important to realize that this information is provided by us in a well-structured version. This makes it ideal for research and for further references. Whether you are performing a particular research in a given field and you require structured data then you have found it.

3.       Market analysis. A company must deal with products related to a particular niche or domain. This calls for comprehensive data that relates with similar services and products which are currently in the market. Loginworks keeps a constant watch on a given data that a company is interested in. we get a wide variety of information from a number of sources and delivers it accurately.  Getting to analyses the market situation is critical in ensuring success of any business. For instance the current market can be analyzed by getting the right information by our web scraping service. This information should be regarded as accurate as possible since we use the personnel that have great expertise on the same field.

From the above facts it is important to realize that any business requires information from a wide range of websites. This information can be then used for various uses. Decisions affecting a company are ought to be made upon satisfactory information.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/158-web-scraping-a-breakthrough-in-data-harvesting

Note:

Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes articles on Yelp Data Scraping, Linkedin Profile Scraping, Yellowpages Data Scraping, eBay Product Scraping,  Website Harvesting, IMDb Data Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping Tripadvisor Data Scraping, Linkedin Email Scraping, Screen Scraping Services and yellowpages data scraping.

Web Scraping the Solution to Data Harvesting

The internet is the number one information provider in the world and it is of course the largest in the same course. Web scraping is meant to extract and harvest useful information from the internet. It can be regarded as a multi-displinary process that involves statistics, databases, data harvesting and data retrieval.

There has been noted a rapid expansion of the web and therefore causing an enormous growth of information. This has led to increased difficulty in the extraction of useful and potential information. Web scraping therefore confronts this problem by harvesting explicit information from a number of websites for knowledge discovery and easy access. It is important to realize that query interfaces of web databases are prone to sharing of same building blocks. It is therefore important to realize that the web offers unprecedented challenge and opportunity to data harvesting. This can be noted in the following ways:



    Huge amount of information. A lot of information is found on the internet. The information can range from one aspect to the other. Usually this information is more than want you actually need. Therefore it is a great concern in getting the required information that is also relevant to you. In this case you have to understand that not only the internet offers an opportunity to gather information but the harvesting itself is never an easy task. By use of our web scraping service we focus our attention to the most important information you need. We only gather information that is essential and one that is applicable to your niche and targets.
    Wide and diverse coverage of web information. In the web almost all topics you can think of are covered. Think of any topic, you will realize that such topic is covered widely and adequately. This is an opportunity to get the variety of information. Nevertheless it is still a great challenge of getting information on a particular target from the wide and diverse audience. By use of web scraping the process can be tailored to collect data for a particular field.
    All types of data are available on the web. Information is usually stored in many formats. Think of texts, multimedia, spreadsheets, structured tables and so on and so forth. Harvesting such kind of information is a great task that may consume a lot of resources in terms of personnel, time and financial resources. Our web scraping service collects analyses the data and stores it in the relevant format for easy reading, application and storage.
    Most of the data is linked. This greatly amuses and at the same time annoys me. Almost all the information on the web is linked from one website to the other with several hyperlinks here and there. Such linking may have been used in marketing or any other SEO purposes. When it comes to harvesting information from such sites that make the majority in the internet today, you are likely to mismatch information. Not only would such process be expensive but a waste of time. We tailor our web scraping service to remain relevant and collect information only from a particular website and not non-related linked websites. For instance if you want to get information from articles found on the article directories you may end up collecting information from wrong websites due to interlink age.
    Most of the data is redundant. The issue with this is that you can collect information that is the same from large number of web pages. This is costly and unacceptable in the business world. Information that is found on a large number of web sites may be similar. This is because of banner advertisements, copyright notices, navigation panels and many others. It is therefore important to engage in web scraping so as to solve such kind of problem. Our web scraping avoids such kind of data as it is never beneficial to a business.
    Deep web and surface web. Think of a website and the information that is contained. A clear look will indicate two types of data contained in it. Surface data can be regarded as the data which you get by use of browser. There is more information that is protected from public users. This information may be more beneficial than other information that we can regard as surface data. Our web scraping service deeps further to such information and thereby equipping our customers with relevant and applicable information for their benefit.
    The web is ever dynamic. Think of the new information and the old information removed from the web. This makes the web a dynamic environment in which you can rely on. The content keeps changing now and again. By our web scraping we are able to monitor such kind of content and provide our clients both with the past and latest data.
    It is a virtual society. Ever thought of internet. It can be regarded as a virtual society based on the following reasons. The internet is never only about product and services, data but also about interactions about people, organizations and various automatic systems. This usually poses a great challenge when it comes to harvesting of such data. Our web scraping ensures that relevant data is held up to date.

This article has explored why the internet is such a huge resource when it comes to data. It has also explored why harvesting such kind of data is really a great challenge and if not well planned it may consume a lot of resources. The article also details on the most important solution available, that is web scraping and why it should be used by companies to harvest information in a simple and efficient way.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/174-web-scraping-the-solution-to-data-harvesting

Note:

Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes articles on Yelp Data Scraping, Linkedin Profile Scraping, Yellowpages Data Scraping, eBay Product Scraping,  Website Harvesting, IMDb Data Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping Tripadvisor Data Scraping, Linkedin Email Scraping, Screen Scraping Services and yellowpages data scraping.

Web harvesting and why companies use it?

In general terms, web harvesting is known as the art of data collection from web sites, mainly for data analysis. These data can be used for competitive intelligence, financial analysis and blogging. In fact, various web harvesting tools have made it a lot easier to pull together information on competitors and that may include financial data of all types, prices and press releases.

Difficulty in web harvesting

The difficulty for web harvests happens when their targeted web sites use a unique technique called IP blocking. Various web sites can easily recognize that a large number of traffic is coming from one particular IP address and block the web harvesting from that IP address from using their web site on the whole.

Web harvesting has an assortment of other names that one may be familiar with. Some of the common names that stands for web harvesting is called data warehousing, web scraping, data collection, data aggregation and of course data collection.

Why companies use web harvesting?

In order to give a company the perfect future and direction, web harvesting can be implemented to gather relevant yet competitive data such as pricing information, product description and strategic plans. Web harvesting can also be termed as a means of data extraction for aggregation purposes by partners, news web sites and even resellers.

These important yet path breaking points make web harvesting such a pivotal tool in taking a company to greater heights. The concept is fast catching up with time and its being hoped that it will help the companies related with these kinds of businesses to grow in abundance in time to come. Another helpful and advanced version of web harvesting has been invented and a chance is for its implementation and is called focused web harvesting.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/130-web-harvesting-and-why-companies-use-it

Note:

Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes articles on Yelp Data Scraping, Linkedin Profile Scraping, Yellowpages Data Scraping, eBay Product Scraping,  Website Harvesting, IMDb Data Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping Tripadvisor Data Scraping, Linkedin Email Scraping, Screen Scraping Services and yellowpages data scraping.

Web Harvesting: A 21st Century Legacy

The word “harvesting” literally means picking the ripe fruit of a crop in its full maturity and readiness for use. This term can amply describe a method of gathering information online which you can use right away and exactly according to your need. Whether you are researching for business or academic purposes, web harvesting is a very helpful procedure.

Web harvesting is synonymous to web data/information extraction and web mining. It connotes a positive activity of getting something useful and valuable for one’s own benefit. From among the many fields you are browsing, you attract only the information that is relevant to the term or concept you have input into the search engine.

Web Harvesting Processes

There are three major processes of web harvesting, namely: retrieving data; extracting data; and integrating data. When these three steps are successfully done, you can be assured of a wealth of knowledge that you can keep handy and utilize according to your need when the right time comes.

Retrieving data is the process that is done by looking for pertinent data on the worldwide web. You can start by simply typing the key word or words for the topic you are interested in on the search engine. Once you have been redirected to the sites where the specific topic can be found, you can go and retrieve the information from the authoritative sites only and store these into your computer.  Search and navigating acts are helpful in this process for they can interact with and penetrate different web pages.

On the other hand, extracting data is the process that includes the identification of useful information that is taken from retrieved content pages and is then extracted to be placed in a desired format. Analysis is made possible through parsing where the data can then be classified according to the different components and divisions of the topic under research.

The third process is integrating data. This is the process of refining the information into specific categories and putting similar concepts together. The extracted materials are organized in such a way that these can be ready for use according to your outline and objectives.

Types of Data Gleaned

The kinds of information that you can harvest are varied and you will discover that these are encompassing different areas of life which will also strengthen the results of your study. In addition, as more fields are explored, more information is gleaned and your research can be considered comprehensive and holistic.

You can get information from news articles; job posting data; industry competitors’ profile; business processes; market and business intelligence; auction data; profile information from any dating website; and product information from any ecommerce website.

In order to make your search more accurate, you do not only depend on the results given by search engines.  You still need to do the scanning, marking, switching, and pasting of the information to get the best from your online research.

You can start by scanning the contents of the saved data until you find the material that sufficiently answers your query. Then in order to emphasize it, you mark that information by highlighting or underscoring the specific words, phrases, sentences and paragraphs that supports the subject matter. If you are creative, you may opt to use different colors and may even go to the extent of assigning colors to specific headings and subheadings, divisions and subdivisions. Secondly, you may then switch to another application where you can store the gleaned information. Spreadsheet, database or word processors are places where you can keep your gathered information intact and ready for use. Finally, you can then proceed to copying and pasting the gleaned information to the application of your choice. You will notice that this is very similar to the manual research from printed sources, only that it is much easier and faster to conduct.

Harvesting Techniques

There are at least three ways that you can dig more useful information online.  The first is web content harvesting which is focused on the specific content of documents or their accounts like email messages, images or HTML files. The collected material may still be unstructured and disorganized and may need to be analyzed.

The second approach is web structure harvesting which seeks more data beyond what is obvious. This is done by following the links to relevant and related information in other websites. However, not all popular sites offer complete and reliable information; thus this technique gives you an idea of which sources and materials are reliable and which data should be retained. When researching online, be careful that your sources are trustworthy and up-to-date.

The third is web usage harvesting. This is one way of using data that is documented by web servers regarding the user’s interactions in order to help recognize user behavior and appraise the usefulness of the web structure.

Overall, the final objective of web harvesting is to accumulate as much material as possible from the web from several sources and to make one big, structured knowledge base. This knowledge base then allows asking for information like that of the usual database system.

Performance of data mining can transcend time, space, and technology. Not one person or group has monopoly over web information, thus, you can satisfy your desire for knowledge through data extraction or web harvesting. Since time if fleeting, your gathered material should be updated every now and then. With the fast transfer of data from one site to another, it is important for you to be aware of the most recent developments. Today’s trends may become obsolete tomorrow and the coming days.

Indeed, high technology has brought so much good things and advantages to human beings such as in conducting researches. Gathering information is faster and easier. You can spend less time in searching for information and more time for the conduct and analysis of your research. The theories, concepts and prior related studies can be easily accessed online so a researcher will have been spared of ceaseless and sleepless nights doing the research. Almost everything he/she needs are attainable through the web.

Finally, a person who has mastered the art of web harvesting will be like a farmer who has been blessed with a conducive weather, healthy soil, great variety of seeds and friendly help. He/she is satisfied with the fruits of his/her labor and he/she can boast of a brighter tomorrow and will have saved enough for rainy days. It is indeed amazing how good the present has become because of the efforts of our forerunners. Surely, the next generation will still have better chances if the present generation would just be accountable for them.

Source: http://www.loginworks.com/blogs/web-scraping-blogs/161-web-harvesting-a-21st-century-legacy

Note:

Delta Ray is experienced web scraping consultant and writes articles on Yelp Data Scraping, Linkedin Profile Scraping, Yellowpages Data Scraping, eBay Product Scraping,  Website Harvesting, IMDb Data Scraping, Yelp Review Scraping Tripadvisor Data Scraping, Linkedin Email Scraping, Screen Scraping Services and yellowpages data scraping.