Apple May Owe You Money for Letting Siri Spy on You
If you use Apple devices, particularly Siri-enabled devices, you may be in for some cash. That’s because Apple just agreed to pay $95 million in damages to settle a class action lawsuit. Dispute? Apple’s infamous smart assistant Siri has violated user privacy.
Wait, what did Siri do?
Back in 2019 , we learned that Siri had been unintentionally spying on many of us. This is due to the way Apple has trained and improved its assistant. As you probably know, to launch Siri, you say “Hey Siri” (these days you can just say “Siri”) and the assistant wakes up and answers (or tries to answer) your query or request. This is known as the “wake up word.” The problem is that sometimes the assistant mishears something said and, believing it to be the wake word, kicks in, causing you to hear, “Sorry, I didn’t understand that,” when in fact you never asked for help in the first place from Siri.
To improve Siri, Apple has occasionally sent audio snippets from Siri-enabled devices to third-party contractors, in part to evaluate whether launching Siri is warranted in this particular case. Apple said it will send less than 1% of the records to contractors and that none of the records are tied to the Apple IDs of the users they came from, but that’s not enough to keep them private. As a result of this training policy, contractors were privy to “private conversations between doctors and patients, business transactions, perceived criminal transactions, sexual encounters, and so on.” While the user’s Apple ID might not accompany the recording, contractors had access to the user’s location, contact information, and application 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 that whatever you were doing at the time was transferred to someone else. -party contractor somewhere in the world. However, Apple is not unique here: both Google and Amazon are accused of the same thing, and Google is currently fighting a similar lawsuit. Shortly after these reports, Apple introduced the option to opt out of sharing recordings with Siri , and later stopped storing recordings altogether.
There might be a $95 million chunk waiting for you.
The lawsuit, which Apple just settled, covers the period from September 17, 2014 to December 31, 2024, the time period when the “Hey Siri” feature was available on Apple devices. If you can confirm that your Apple device accidentally launched Siri during a private call, you may be eligible for a payout. It’s $20 per Siri-enabled device, up to a maximum of five devices. In theory, you could walk away with this lawsuit with $100, but if too many class members come forward, that initial $20 could drop.
To be clear, Apple denies any wrongdoing in this case, although the company apologized for the Siri fiasco years ago. Additionally, the agreement still needs approval from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White. Until then, payments are not official.
As Reuters notes , $95 million is about nine hours of profit for Apple. Justice.