Editor’s Note: This story has been updated with a statement and additional information from Apple provided after publication.
(NEXSTAR) — If Siri has ever been activated on your Apple device without your consent, you may soon be eligible to receive part of a proposed $95 million settlement the company agreed to this week.
Court filings show a preliminary settlement was submitted on Tuesday in a federal court in Oakland, California, according to Reuters. It is now awaiting approval by a U.S. district judge.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019, claimed Apple’s virtual assistant, Siri, could be activated without the consent of the device’s owner, and would then record conversations. That information was then provided to third parties, the suit alleges.
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The suit highlighted alleged examples detailed in a report from The Guardian, which said it had learned from contractors that recordings included conversations people had with their doctors, “drug deals,” and other intimate moments. Two plaintiffs in the case said they received targeted ads regarding Air Jordan shoes and Olive Garden after speaking about them near an Apple device with Siri, according to Reuters.
The allegations about a snoopy Siri contradicted Apple’s long-running commitment to protect the privacy of its customers — a crusade that CEO Tim Cook has often framed as a fight to preserve “a fundamental human right.”
“Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning,” an Apple spokesperson said in a statement to Nexstar. “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. We use Siri data to improve Siri, and we are constantly developing technologies to make Siri even more private.”
While Apple has denied wrongdoing in the case, the company has agreed to the $95 million payout outlined in the preliminary settlement.
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According to court filings, the settlement, if approved, would include those who had an Apple device with Siri on it — including iPhones, iPads, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch, or Apple TV — between September 17, 2014, and December 31, 2024. Class members, or those who may have been impacted, could be able to submit claims for up to five such devices “on which they claim to have experienced and unintended Siri activation during a conversation intended to be confidential or private.”
Payments from the class action settlement would be capped at $20 per device, but could vary based on how many “valid claims” are submitted. Like other class action lawsuits, this preliminary settlement says known impacted Apple users could receive notification of their potential eligibility via mailed postcards or email. Those who don’t receive such notification but believe they are impacted will have a chance to make a claim online.
The proposed settlement says claimants will have to “confirm … under oath” that they purchased or owned one or more devices with Siri on them in the U.S. or its territories; Siri was enabled on the device or devices; Siri was activated without consent; and “the unintended Siri activation” happened during a conversation that was meant to be confidential or private.
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Tens of millions of people may qualify for the settlement, Reuters reports. Only 3% to 5% of eligible consumers are expected to file claims, according to estimates in court documents.
A website with additional information is expected to be created but was not available as of Monday. The settlement is still subject to court approval, and would also require Apple to establish a webpage about its “Improve Siri” program, according to The Washington Post.
Apple announced in 2019 that it had made changes to Siri to improve its privacy protections. Since those changes, audio recordings of Siri interactions are no longer retained and users are allowed to opt into helping improve Siri with audio samples of their interactions. Recordings collected from users who have opted in are only shared with Apple employees, the company says.
A February 14 court hearing has been proposed by lawyers in the case to review the terms.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case did not immediately respond to Nexstar’s request for comment.
The settlement represents a sliver of the $705 billion in profits that Apple has pocketed since September 2014. It’s also a fraction of the roughly $1.5 billion that the lawyers representing consumers had estimated Apple could been required to pay if the company had been found of violating wiretapping and other privacy laws had the case gone to a trial.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
