As Part of This Class Action Lawsuit, Apple May Owe Some Users up to $5,000 Each.
Apple is no stranger to class action lawsuits. It had to pay customers $50 million for the infamous “butterfly keyboard” and $250 million for artificial intelligence features it promised to implement in some iPhone models but never did. (Many of these features, by the way, are coming this year .) But in all my years covering Apple lawsuits, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen such a massive settlement. As The Times reports , Apple is facing a $32.5 billion class action settlement, though the claim itself may be even larger than the amount in dispute.
Why was Apple sued?
According to The Times, the lawsuit stems from Apple’s collection of biometric data, specifically data collected from Illinois residents. The lawsuit alleges that Apple violated Illinois law by collecting biometric data from these users using facial recognition without adequate notice. In 2008, the state passed the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Protection Act to protect users from companies that collect data such as retina or iris scans, fingerprints, voiceprints, or facial prints. The law states that companies may collect this information, but only after obtaining written consent from each user.
The lawsuit alleges that Apple’s Photos app automatically uses facial recognition to scan faces in a user’s library and create a “faceprint” for each person found. According to the lawsuit, Apple’s Photos app then uses an algorithm to identify an iPhone user. It then creates and stores biometric data on the device to classify that user within the app. One problem for Apple is that not all of this data is stored on the user’s device, at least as the lawsuit alleges. Because users can sync Photos data between devices, the plaintiffs allege that Apple stores their biometric data on its servers, which violates the law.
The lawsuit is divided into three classes : the “Local Device Class,” which affects Illinois citizens whose Apple devices added their photos to the People album between September 13, 2016, and the present day; the “iCloud Subclass,” which affects Illinois citizens who had their last name or other identifier listed in the People album and who had an iCloud account activated to store photos between September 13, 2016, and the present day; and the “iCloud Faceprint Subclass,” which affects Illinois citizens whose devices were running iOS 17.6, iPadOS 17.6, or macOS Sonoma 14.6 or later and who added their photos to the People album and who had 5,000 or more photos and videos stored in their iCloud Photo library between March 25, 2025, and the present day.
Apple, on the other hand, is trying to dismiss the lawsuit. The company maintains that its privacy protections for the Photos app comply with Illinois law, including the fact that raw biometric data cannot be used to recreate a face or be linked to a person’s identity, and that Apple itself does not have access to your data in the Photos app. Crucially, Apple maintains that all facial recognition processes occur individually on each device . Only tags are synced between devices: if you choose to identify a friend or family member in the Photos app on your iPhone, this will sync to, say, your Mac, but then your Mac will have to perform the task of identifying photos of that person—it won’t simply transfer that data from your iPhone.
This case isn’t new. According to 9to5Mac , the lawsuit was first filed back in March 2020. While the situation has changed significantly in the intervening six years, a significant development occurred this week: a judge in Illinois ruled that the plaintiffs had met the requirements for filing a class action lawsuit.
Meta faces a similar lawsuit.
Apple isn’t the first company to face a class action lawsuit in violation of a 2008 Illinois law. Meta, or Facebook as it was then known, was forced to pay damages in a similar case in 2021. That lawsuit, too, began several years earlier, in 2015, and alleged that the company failed to obtain user consent before using facial recognition features. Unlike Apple, there was no question about whether Meta stored user data on its servers.
According to the law, users were entitled to $345, and three were paid $5,000 each. In total, Meta had to spend $650 million to settle the lawsuit, which represents approximately 6.9 million Facebook users in Illinois. By comparison, the lawsuit against Apple affects approximately 6.5 million users.
How much will Apple have to pay individual users?
While Meta paid most users $345, Apple could face a much larger payout in this case. Each victim could be entitled to up to $5,000 in compensation. Assuming each of the 6.5 million users receives this amount, Apple would pay out $32.5 billion. This represents approximately 0.7% of the company’s $4.5 trillion market capitalization, which may seem insignificant in percentage terms, but it’s far more than the typical speeding fines companies like Apple are accustomed to paying.
It’s too early to say whether you’ll be entitled to any of the proceeds from this lawsuit. Apple could still have the lawsuit dismissed. But this is a notable development in class action lawsuits against major tech companies, especially after what we saw with the Meta lawsuit five years ago.