Apple To Pay $95M To Settle Lawsuit Of Eavesdropping Its Users

1

Apple should remove overheard conversations and provide user preferences to data collected to enhance Siri.

Apple has consented to pay $95 million in cash to settle a proposed class action lawsuit claiming it violated user privacy through its voice assistant Siri.

Apple has consistently denied any misconduct and liability in the proposed settlement that was described in the court document viewed on Thursday.

A class action lawsuit was filed five years ago accusing Voice Assistant Siri of listening to the private conversations of its users in iPhones, iPads, Home Pods, and other Apple devices supplemented with the digital assistant.

The California-based tech giant has made user privacy a significant part of its brand image, one of many reasons it maintains strict supervision over its hardware and software ecosystem.

A preliminary settlement was submitted to the federal court in Oakland, California, on Tuesday evening, and US District Judge Jeffrey White must approve it.

Apple device owners claimed that Apple frequently recorded their private conversations after they accidentally turned on Siri and shared these conversations with advertisers and other third parties.

The settlement indicated that estimated tens of millions of US owners whose private chats were illegally recorded would receive no more than $20 per Siri device, such as Apple Watches and iPhones, from a proposed settlement fund of $95 million.

The agreement also requires Apple to verify that it has removed any overheard conversations and provide user preferences to voice data collected to enhance its voice assistant, Siri.

Voice assistants usually turn on when people say, “Hey, Siri.”

Two respondents claimed that when they mentioned Olive Garden restaurants and Air Jordan footwear, they got advertisements for those products. Another claimed that he received advertisements for a brand-name surgical procedure, which he had discussed privately with his doctor.

The class period begins on September 17, 2014, and ends on December 31, 2024. The illegal recordings are said to have started when Siri added the “Hey, Siri” feature.

Apple denied any wrongdoing but agreed to a settlement.

The Cupertino, California-based company or its attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Thursday.

Lawyers representing the respondents also did not respond immediately to similar requests. They could ask for the settlement fund for up to $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million for expenses.

The $95 million is about nine hours of profit for Apple, whose net income is $93.74 billion, as indicated in its most recent fiscal year.

In 2023, Amazon had a similar lawsuit. It agreed to pay the US Federal Trade Commission about $30 million to resolve a lawsuit claiming that the company has violated privacy with its Alexa digital assistant and Ring doorbell cameras.

Dozens of individuals made the lawsuit who received death threats, racial abuse, and blackmail after their in-home Ring smart cameras were compromised.

Further, Amazon was accused of violating state wiretap laws by allegedly collecting and storing data from its Alexa voice assistant software.

The consumers claimed that Amazon has illegally and secretly recorded billions of private conservations that extended beyond commands directed at Alexa.

A similar lawsuit for Google’s Voice Assistant users is currently pending in the federal court of San Jose, California, which is in the same district as the Oakland court. The law firms representing the Apple case are representing these respondents.  

The lawsuit claimed that Google implemented many artificial barriers to prevent consumers from using voice assistants and wakeword technology, which is responsible for activating voice assistants to access search engines outside Google.

This lawsuit was restored from the one initially filed in April 2022, which was dismissed under a tolling agreement to allow ongoing antitrust litigation against Google to proceed.

The case is Lopez et al v. Apple Inc., US District Court, Northern District of California, No. 19-04577.