Apple to pay $95m to settle Siri listening case
Apple to pay $95m to settle Siri 'listening' lawsuit
Getty Images The iPhone 6 and Apple Watch were two devices owned by the lead plaintiff in the lawsuit
Apple has agreed to pay $95m (?77m) to settle a court case alleging some of its devices were listening to people without their permission. The tech giant was accused of eavesdropping on its customers through its virtual assistant Siri. The claimants also allege voice recordings were shared with advertisers. Apple has denied selling Siri data and said it settled to avoid further litigation.
"Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose," an Apple spokesperson told BBC News, adding that data collected by the tool is only used to improve it. "Apple settled this case to avoid additional litigation so we can move forward from concerns about third-party grading that we already addressed in 2019," they added. They said that its digital assistant technology had been "engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning" and it has continually sought to enhance its privacy. In the preliminary settlement, the tech firm denies any wrongdoing, as well as claims that it "recorded, disclosed to third parties, or failed to delete, conversations recorded as the result of a Siri activation" without consent. Apple's lawyers also say they will confirm they have "permanently deleted individual Siri audio recordings collected by Apple prior to October 2019". But the claimants say the tech firm recorded people who activated the virtual assistant unintentionally - without using the phrase "Hey, Siri" to wake it. They say advertisers who received the recordings could then look for keywords in them to better target ads. The lead plaintiff Fumiko Lopez claims she and her daughter were both recorded without their consent. They allege they were served targeted ads after talking about products including Air Jordans.
Class action
Apple has proposed a decision date of 14 February in the court in Northern California. Class action lawsuits work by a small number of people going to court on behalf of a larger group. If they are successful, the money won is paid out across all claimants. According to the court documents, each claimant - who has to be based in the US -could be paid up to $20 per Siri-enabled device they owned between 2014 and 2019. In this case, the lawyers could take 30% of the fee plus expenses - which comes to just under $30m. By settling, Apple not only denies wrongdoing, but it also avoids the risk of facing a court case which could potentially mean a much larger pay out. The California company made $94.9bn in revenue in the three months up to 28 September 2024.
