This is suggestion #1 on your list of remediation steps for victims, but you didn't provide any information on how anyone would actually do that. How exactly would I search the internet for copies of my voice?
Please don't tell me the solution is giving an embedding of my voice to another third party.
Mercer hasn't released many public statements over the incident. Social media posts aren't necessarily public; but I did find this breach notification sample filed with CA - https://oag.ca.gov/ecrime/databreach/reports/sb24-621099 . I guess we'll see if our legislators finally take data privacy seriously.
Mercor has definitely released statements with boilerplate "investigations are underway."
I don’t even use biometrics on apple devices, I use a 6 digit pin.
It was always a stupid idea.
The thing about been willing to trade convenience for security is you get called paranoid and then when the other shoe does drop and you are still doing that you still get called paranoid for the current thing you are not doing that “everyone does”.
Assuming Apple is truthful on this matter (so far it seems so), Apple devices store a mathematical representation of the data, not the data itself (i.e. not a picture of your finger) and keep it only on device on a special hardware section designed for extra security. When apps ask for authentication, they can never inspect the data, they can only ask “does this match?”.
Even if you were somehow able to exfiltrate the data and find some way to transform it for something nefarious, you’d still need to first attack and bypass a specific hardware feature of the target’s device.
So sure, not having any representation of the data anywhere is technically more secure (maybe, as typing your code could be intercepted by a shoulder surfer or a camera), but biometrics on Apple devices are fundamentally not the same as having your raw data available on a random server somewhere.
In the use case of a mobile phone, apple's face id absolutely improves security several-fold.
Because right now the incentive to do what's right are so low. Taking a risk with other's people lives is becomming the norm for companies.