Update January 27: Payments are now beginning to arrive for eligible recipients. The original article appears below.
If you’ve always suspected that Siri is listening to you even though you haven’t called upon it, a new class-action lawsuit may give you some peace of mind. Apple has agreed to pay nearly $100 million to settle a proposed class action lawsuit over Siri’s ability to “listen to, record, and share their conversations” without consent.
According to the Lopez v. Apple suit, which was filed in 2019, the plaintiffs allege that Apple’s Siri-enabled devices both listened to conversations due to “accidental activations” and shared the contents with advertisers. Examples in the suit include Air Jordan sneakers, Pit Viper sunglasses, and a specific surgical treatment, all of which allegedly resulted in targeted ads on their devices.
The lawsuit covers a decade of devices, from September 2014 to December 2024, and seemingly includes iPhones, Apple Watches, and any other device with “Hey Siri” capabilities. As is the case with class-action settlements, Apple has denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to the terms of the settlement. In a statement to the press, Apple stressed that Siri data is not used for market purposes:
Siri has been engineered to protect user privacy from the beginning. 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.
The $95 million figure is relatively low, especially since it also includes legal fees, which are likely to top $30 million. For example, the class-action suit over the iPhone 6 battery issue concluded in a $500 million settlement, which resulted in an average payout of $65 per person across 3 million claims. At any rate, Reuters reports class members may receive up to $20 per Siri-enabled device, but that will be dependent on the terms of the settlement, which haven’t been disclosed.
Members of the class received emails this week with unique codes identifying their participation in the class action. To receive payment, those codes must be entered into the claims section of the Lopez Voice Assistant Settlement site. We had trouble logging in when we tried, so there might be a temporary issue with the site.
