Think that Apple’s Siri snooped on your private conversations in the past? If so, you may be able to snag a slice of the $95 million that Apple is paying out to settle a class action lawsuit.
A settlement page published Friday in the case of Lopez v. Apple Inc. explains the steps and deadlines for people who want to make a claim. The settlement is geared toward current or former users of a Siri device in the US whose conversations with the voice assistant were captured by Apple or shared with third parties due to an “unintended Siri activation.”
How to qualify
To qualify, you must have been using the device between Sept. 17, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2024.
How to enter a claim
If you’re in the qualifying group, you should receive an email or postcard with a Claim Identification Code and a Confirmation Code alerting you to the settlement. In that case, head to the claim submission page, enter both codes, and then log in to proceed.
Also: 7 ways to lock down your phone’s security – before it’s too late
If you don’t receive either the email or postcard, you can still try to put together a claim. To do that, enter a new claim at the submission page. You’ll be asked to provide your contact information along with a serial number and model name for the Siri device or proof of purchase. You can add as many as five different devices, including an iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch, AirPods, HomePod, or any other gadget that uses Siri.
Either way, you’ll be asked whether you want to receive your payout by direct deposit to your bank account or by electronic check. Don’t wait too long to file a claim; the deadline is July 2, 2025. You can also opt to do nothing, in which case you simply won’t collect anything.
Following the filing deadline, the court still has to approve the settlement before payouts can begin. A final approval hearing is scheduled for Aug. 1 with US District Judge Jeffrey White in the federal court in Oakland, California.
How much do you stand to collect?
The settlement page currently lists a payment cap of $20 per device. So if you submit five different devices, that’s a cool $100. However, the final amount could go up or down based on the total number of valid claims and the number of Siri devices included. Factoring in attorney fees and other costs, though, the final payout per device is more likely to be lower.
The class action lawsuit, filed in 2019, was initiated by three plaintiffs who alleged that Apple programmed Siri to intercept conversations even when no hot word, such as “Hey Siri,” was spoken. The plaintiffs also claimed that Apple violated their privacy by sharing recordings of the conversations with third-party contractors.
Also: 10 easy ways to make Siri work better on your iPhone today
In settling the suit this past January, Apple has denied any wrongdoing on its part. In response to the lawsuit and privacy concerns, an Apple spokesperson shared the following statement with ZDNET this past January:
“Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose. 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.”
With such concerns surfacing at that time, Apple did make specific changes to its voice assistant in August 2019. The company suspended the human grading of Siri responses, promised to stop storing recordings of Siri conversations, and altered the Siri training based on audio samples to an opt-in process. Even for people who opted in to allow their conversations to be shared, the recordings from then on were accessible only to Apple employees and not outside contractors.
Also: How I set ChatGPT as Siri’s backup – and what else it can do on my iPhone
To learn more about the claim submission process, check out the FAQ section on the settlement page. If you still have questions, you can also contact the settlement administrator by snail mail or by phone.
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Source: Robotics - zdnet.com
