Apple has started issuing payments as a part of a $95 million class-action settlement over allegations its voice assistant, Siri, was used to eavesdrop on private conversations.
The California-based tech giant last year agreed to settle the lawsuit, which alleged “unlawful and intentional recording of individuals confidential communications without their consent.”
According to court documents, the alleged recordings occurred even when people didn’t seek to activate the virtual assistant with the trigger words, “Hey, Siri.” Some of the recorded conversations were then shared with advertisers in an attempt to sell their products to consumers more likely to be interested in the goods and services, the lawsuit asserted.
Apple continues to deny the allegations.
“Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning,” Apple said in a previous statement. “Siri data has never been used to build marketing profiles and it has never been sold to anyone for any purpose.”
Payments to settlement recipients began going out on Friday.
The settlement includes anyone who purchased or owned an Apple device between Sept. 17, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2014 and experienced an unintended Siri activation “during a conversation intended to be confidential or private.” Devices included in the suit include an iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, MacBook, iMac, HomePod, iPod touch or Apple TV.
Class members could submit claims for up to five devices, and as a result, will receive a pro rata portion of a payment up to a cap of $20 per device, the settlement website explained. The final payout will increase or decrease depending on the total number of claims and devices.
Claims are no longer being accepted, as the deadline has passed. Anyone who hasn’t received a payment yet but did submit a claim, may receive their payment soon, as distribution began just days ago.
It’s unclear how long the payment distribution process will take.
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.
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