Apple has moved to settle a five-year-old class action lawsuit over Siri privacy. Reuters reports that the proposed settlement was filed on Tuesday in Oakland, CA. The company agreed to pay $95 million to class members, estimated to be tens of millions of Siri-enabled device owners. US District Judge Jeffrey White needs to approve the settlement before it becomes official.
The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 report that Apple quality control contractors could regularly hear sensitive info accidentally recorded by the voice assistant’s “Hey Siri” feature. The clips were said to include medical information, criminal activities and even “sexual encounters.” Reuters says Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle the case.
Engadget reached out to Apple for comment. We’ll update this story if we hear back.
Two plaintiffs claimed their inadvertently recorded mentions of Nike Air Jordans and Olive Garden restaurants led to receiving ads for those products. After talking about it with his doctor, another plaintiff said he got ads for a brand-name surgical treatment.
After the original story broke five-plus years ago, Apple highlighted its layers of privacy protections and stressed that the recordings weren’t tied to Apple accounts. It also said its quality control teams studied the clips in “secure facilities” and were bound by “strict confidentiality agreements.”
After an internal review, Apple suspended the program and admitted it wasn’t “fully living up to” its ideals. The company returned to reviewing Siri recordings soon after — but with some big changes. It reportedly fired hundreds of quality control contractors and changed its policy so that only Apple employees could review private Siri data. It also moved to delete inadvertently triggered audio clips and began requiring users to opt in to sharing Siri recordings or transcripts.
Reuters notes that the proposed $95 million in cash amounts to about nine hours of profit for the company. (Nice work if you can get it.) The settlement’s class period runs from September 17, 2014 — when Apple launched “Hey Siri” in iOS 8 — to December 31, 2024. If you owned a Siri-enabled mobile product during that period (and Judge White approves the settlement), you might get up to $20 per device. However, you’ll have to join the class, and it isn’t yet clear how to do that.
