Serious Siri flaw can expose your unread messages

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Siri Alexa in voice report
You can start by keeping your mouth shut!
Photo: Apple

A nasty new flaw with Siri has been discovered this week that could allow people to snoop on your messages.

iPhone users found that Siri can be used to read new messages from third-party apps, even when your iPhone is locked.

The new Siri flaw was first spotted by Mac Magazine and works on the latest version of iOS (11.2.6) as well as the betas for iOS 11.3. To take advantage of the flaw, someone just needs to say “Hey Siri, read my notifications”. The iPhone will then read any messages you have in apps like Skye, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Signal, WhatsApp and others.

Even if you have notification previews turned off the Siri flaw will still share your messages with whoever asks for them. The only app that’s safe is Apple’s Messages app. Users have to unlock their iPhone before Siri will read iMessages.

To avoid Siri’s privacy flaw, you can just turn off “Hey Siri.” You can find the toggle under Settings >> Siri & Search >> Hey Siri.

We’ve reached out to Apple for comment on if the issue will be fixed by iOS 11.3’s release.

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