Apple Pays $95 Million Over Illegal Siri Recordings. Reuters reports that Apple has reached a $95 million settlement over a class-action lawsuit that alleged its digital assistant Siri routinely recorded private conversations, which were then sold to third parties for targeted advertising.
As The Guardian newspaper reports, a whistleblower revealed that Siri was accidentally activated when an Apple Watch was raised and speech was detected. Users noticed suspiciously accurate targeted ads that appeared after discussions about specific products.
As part of the proposed settlement, Apple is offering compensation of up to $20 per Siri-enabled device for customers who made purchases between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024. This includes iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches, MacBooks, HomePods, iPod touches and Apple TVs.
The scandal first came to light in 2019 when a whistleblower told the Guardian that there were “countless instances of recordings containing private conversations between doctors and patients, business deals, possible criminal acts and sexual encounters”.
Although Apple did not admit any wrongdoing, it did agree that Siri was inadvertently recording private conversations. It’s worth noting that if the court had upheld the class action and the users had won, Apple could have been fined more than $1.5 billion under the Wiretap Act alone.
Reuters also reports that Google is facing a similar lawsuit in the same district over its own digital assistant, with the case involving users of Google Home devices, Nest Hub and Pixel smartphones from May 2016 to the present.
