If you use Apple devices—specifically, Siri-enabled devices—you might have some money coming your way. That’s because Apple just agreed to a $95 million settlement to resolve a class action lawsuit. The dispute? That Apple’s infamous smart assistant, Siri, violated user privacy.
Wait, what did Siri do?
Table of Contents
Back in 2019, we learned that Siri was inadvertently spying on many of us. It has to do with how Apple was training and improving its assistant. As you likely know, to trigger Siri, you say “Hey Siri,” (these days, you can simply say “Siri”) and the assistant wakes up and answers (or attempts to answer) your query or request. This is known as the “wake word.” The problem is, sometimes the assistant mishears something said, and, believing it to be the wake word, turns on, resulting in those times you hear, “I’m sorry, I didn’t get that” when you, in fact, never asked for Siri’s help in the first place.
In order to improve Siri, Apple would occasionally send snippets of audio recordings from Siri-enabled devices to third-party contractors, in part, to rate whether or not a Siri trigger was warranted in that specific case. Apple said it would send fewer than 1% of recordings to contractors, and that none of the recordings were tied to the Apple IDs of the users they came from, but that wasn’t enough to preserve their privacy. As a result of this training policy, contractors were privy to, “private discussions between doctors and patients, business deals, seemingly criminal dealings, sexual encounters, and so on.” And while the user’s Apple ID might not have accompanied the recording, contractors did have access to the user’s location, contact details, and app data.
Apple created a situation where if your iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV thought you said “Hey Siri,” there was a small chance whatever you were doing at that time would be shared with some third-party contractor somewhere in the world. Apple isn’t unique here, however: Both Google and Amazon have been accused of the same, and Google is currently engaged in a similar lawsuit. Shortly after these reports, Apple made it possible to opt-out of sharing Siri recordings, and later stopped storing the recordings altogether.
There might be a slice of $95 million waiting for you
The lawsuit Apple just settled ranges between Sept. 17, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2024, the period of time “Hey Siri” has been an option on Apple devices. If you can attest that your Apple device accidentally triggered Siri during a private conversation, you qualify for a payout. That’s $20 per Siri-enabled device, with a limit of five devices. In theory, you could walk away with $100 from this lawsuit, but if too many class members come forward, that initial $20 could drop.
To be clear, Apple has denied wrongdoing in this case, though the company did apologize for the Siri debacle years ago. In addition, this settlement still needs approval from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Until then, the payouts are not official.
As Reuters points out, $95 million is roughly nine hours of profit for Apple. Justice.