Apple agrees to settle a 2019 Siri privacy lawsuit for $95 million

Apple has moved to settle a five-year-old class action lawsuit over Siri privacy. Reuters reports that the proposed settlement was filed on Tuesday in Oakland, CA. The company agreed to pay $95 million to class members, estimated to be tens of millions of Siri-enabled device owners. US District Judge Jeffrey White needs to approve the settlement before it becomes official.

The lawsuit stemmed from a 2019 report that Apple quality control contractors could regularly hear sensitive info accidentally recorded by the voice assistant’s “Hey Siri” feature. The clips were said to include medical information, criminal activities and even “sexual encounters.” Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle the case.

Two plaintiffs claimed their inadvertently recorded mentions of Nike Air Jordans and Olive Garden restaurants led to receiving ads for those products. After talking about it with his doctor, another plaintiff said he got ads for a brand-name surgical treatment.

In a statement to Engadget, Apple highlighted its Siri privacy protections and motive for settling the case. “Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning,” an Apple spokesperson wrote. “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.”

Apple says any data you choose to share with Siri is never used for advertising, and the company has stressed that there isn’t any evidence in this lawsuit (or anywhere else) that the company has done so. The assistant does as much learning as possible on-device, and modern devices — those with 2018’s A12 Bionic chip or newer — process your audio entirely that way. The company added that Apple Intelligence doesn’t train on user data.

Apple

After the original story broke five-plus years ago, Apple highlighted its layers of privacy protections and stressed that the recordings weren’t tied to Apple accounts. It also said its quality control teams studied the clips in “secure facilities” and were bound by “strict confidentiality agreements.”

After an internal review in 2019, Apple suspended the program and admitted it wasn’t “fully living up to” its ideals. The company returned to reviewing Siri recordings soon after — but with some big changes. It reportedly fired hundreds of quality control contractors. It changed its policy so that only Apple employees could review private Siri data — connected to a random identifying number, not your Apple account. (And the company says they take measures to delete any inadvertently triggered recordings). It also began requiring users to opt in to sharing Siri recordings or transcripts.

You can check if you’ve opted in from your device. Head to Settings > Privacy & Security > Analytics & Improvements > Improve Siri & Dictation. You can also review and delete any stored transcripts in the same location. (If you don’t see that option, you likely weren’t opted in.)

Reuters notes that the proposed $95 million in cash amounts to about nine hours of profit for the company. (Nice work if you can get it.) The settlement’s class period runs from September 17, 2014 — when Apple launched “Hey Siri” in iOS 8 — to December 31, 2024. If you owned a Siri-enabled mobile product during that period (and Judge White approves the settlement), you might get up to $20 per device. However, you’ll have to join the class, and it isn’t yet clear how to do that.

Update, January 6, 2025, 11:57AM ET: This story has been updated with a statement from Apple and additional context.

This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/big-tech/apple-agrees-to-settle-a-2019-siri-privacy-lawsuit-for-95-million-195820723.html?src=rss