Have you enabled Siri on your iPhone, iPad or Apple Watch? Then there is a good chance that Siri has eavesdropped on you in recent years, for which Apple now has to pay a high fine.
Siri eavesdrops on users
It has now been five years since Apple was sued for unlawful use of Siri. The lawsuit accuses Apple of allowing its voice assistant to listen in on users’ conversations without permission. Apple’s voice assistant was often incorrectly activated by ‘Hey, Siri’, for example due to ambient sounds. Siri not only listened to conversations, but also stored the recorded data. This data was then used to personalize advertisements.
Personalizing advertisements does not just happen, third parties need certain data from users for this. Advertisers have therefore gained access to the data collected by Siri. Companies could then tailor advertisements to users. This happened without user consent, which means Apple is breaking the law. The company now has to pay a high fine for this.
Apple gets fined for Siri
The lawsuit against Apple has been going on since 2019, but has only now been concluded. Apple has agreed to a fine of no less than 95 million dollars (approximately 91 million euros). The judge in Oakland (California) has yet to officially end the lawsuit, but there is a good chance that this fine will finally bring an end to the charges against Siri.
It is striking that Apple has agreed to the fine. The company has never admitted that Siri has eavesdropped on users, the same goes for sharing this data with third parties. Apple also admits no guilt in paying the amount. The company has already apologized for the incident and indicated that the audio fragments will no longer be stored.
Users receive compensation
Apple has now taken a number of measures to improve Siri. For example, matters related to Siri are only viewed internally, so that third parties no longer have access to the data. You now also have to give explicit permission when you activate Siri and you can enable ‘Ask app not to track’. This way you prevent your data from being used to personalize advertisements.
The settlement means good news for American users, because they will receive a compensation of twenty dollars per device that has Siri. Each user can receive this reimbursement for up to five devices used between 2014 and 2017. These are devices such as the iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, MacBook and HomePod. European users will not notice anything about the settlement, unfortunately you cannot apply for compensation here.
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