Apple to pay $95 million for illegal Siri wiretapping

©YouTube screenshot

Since 2019, Apple has been dragging itself along, because a class action lawsuit was filed to denounce Siri's recordings. But since everything has a price, for the modest sum of 95 million dollars, the brand has for the moment gotten rid of its sword of Damocles.

“Hey Siri”, are you listening to me ? In 2019, a revelation from the Guardian brought to light that Siri, Apple's flagship voice assistant, sometimes listened to intimate, medical or sensitive conversations without their knowledge. And this, well before being activated by the famous “Hey Siri”. A scandal that has given rise to a class action lawsuit in the United States, with serious accusations: violation of privacy, sharing of data with third parties, and failure in the management of personal data.

Apple, after downplaying the issue in 2019, has since changed its policy. The giant now offers users the option to choose whether or not they want their conversations to be used to improve Siri. But these public relations actions are not enough to erase suspicions. By signing this $95 million agreement, the company seems more concerned with avoiding new lawsuits than with truly addressing privacy issues, as indicated by the Siècle Digital.

Furthermore, this agreement allows users who owned a Siri device between 2014 and 2024 to receive compensation of $20 per device. For Apple, this fine is a drop in the ocean of its profits, but the gesture sends a signal: should tech companies really wait to be caught red-handed to start respecting our data ? What's more, five years after the fact…

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