Apple has just settled a proposed $95 million lawsuit brought by plaintiffs who claimed that the firm’s voice activation system, Siri — which you’ll probably recognize from your iPhone — was recording conversations without permission from users and passing the information on to third parties.
The Apple settlement lawsuit, which was first brought before the courts in 2019, led Apple to internally review its Siri processes and roll out a raft of new permission prompts for users. But despite these alterations, the tech behemoth will likely pay out a small fee to millions of claimants.
In this article, we’ll summarize the ins and outs of the landmark lawsuit, how much you can expect to make if you’re eligible to make a claim, and what we know at present about the timeline for applying.
Apple’s $95 Million Privacy Lawsuit Explained
Apple has settled a $95 million privacy lawsuit which alleges that Siri secretly eavesdropped on the conversations of mobile device users after they activated the voice assistant system by accident — in other words, without their expressed permission.
The lawsuit, which still needs final approval from a US district court judge, additionally claims that Apple then sold the information it collected via Siri to third-party advertisers.
The court documents include several statements from plaintiffs that detail links between products and services they’d had conversations about, and advertisements they were subsequently served on their phones.
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As the case has been settled, Apple can maintain that they didn’t do anything wrong, while simultaneously avoiding any further lawsuits concerning the issue.
There’s very little financial motivation for them to see the cause through, either. The company made almost one thousand times more in profits ($93.74 billion) than the payout total during 2024, so settling now is a small drop in a very large ocean of corporate cash.
Who can Claim, and How Much Might You Get?
“The proposed Settlement Class”, the settlement reads, “consists of ‘all individual current or former owners or purchasers of a Siri Device, who reside in the United States and its territories, whose confidential or private communications were obtained by Apple and/or were shared with third parties as a result of an unintended Siri activation’.”
If you do own an Apple device with Siri, you’ll have had to have used it within the period specified in the lawsuit, referred to as the “class period.” This is September 17, 2014 — when Apple first introduced the “Hey Siri” activation demand — through to December 31, 2024.
Claimants will also have to confirm under oath that they have witnessed instances of Siri eavesdropping on conversations they had intended to be private.
Of course, if you don’t have an iPhone — or you have one, but you’ve never turned Siri on — you won’t be eligible for a claim.
According to Reuters, the number of claimants could be in the tens of millions, with up to $20 each up for grabs for each device Siri was installed on. This could include iPhones and Apple Watches, as well as iPads, HomePod speakers, Mac computers and Apple TVs.
The lawyers representing the two plaintiffs who lodged the lawsuit against the tech behemoth are set to take almost $30 million in fees and expenses. This means the total payout shared equally among claimants is likely to be significantly less than the amount Apple has agreed to pay.
How Do You Submit a Claim for Apple’s Siri Lawsuit?
As Apple has only just settled the lawsuit and there’s a further hearing scheduled in February to approve the terms, claimants will have to wait until at least that point to secure their slice of the settlement pie.
So for now, all you have to do is keep your eye on February 14, when everything should hopefully be finalized. After that, we should have some sort of idea of where — and when — claims can be submitted.
