Apple, which has constantly positioned itself as the company most mindful of user privacy, has agreed to pay $95 million to settle a lawsuit accusing it of using Siri to eavesdrop on people using iPhone and other devices.
The most valuable company in the world, with a market capitalisation of $3.68 trillion, reached a proposed settlement in the five-year-old lawsuit. The proposed settlement was filed on Tuesday in a federal court in Oakland, California.
The settlement in the class action case needs to be approved by US District Judge Jeffrey White and the lawyers involved in the case have proposed scheduling a February 14 court hearing to review the terms.
Apple denied wrongdoing in agreeing to settle. The Cupertino, California-based company and its lawyers are yet to comment on the proposed settlement.
On 31 October last year, Apple posted quarterly revenue of $94.9 billion, up 6 per cent year over year.
In an exclusive story done on 26 July 2019, The Guardian said it learnt that “Apple contractors regularly hear confidential medical information, drug deals… as part of their job providing quality control, or ‘grading’, the company’s Siri.”
“Apple does not explicitly disclose it in its consumer-facing privacy documentation, a small proportion of Siri recordings are passed on to contractors working for the company around the world,” the British newspaper had added.
The lawsuit asserted that 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.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs in the case (Lopez et al v. Apple Inc., U.S. District Court, Northern District of California, No. 19-04577) may seek up to $28.5 million in fees, plus $1.1 million for expenses, from the settlement fund.
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