JohnC6
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Apple has agreed to pay $95million (£77m) to settle a five year old lawsuit in Oakland, California, that accused the company of adapting Siri to eavesdrop on people using the device over the past ten years ..and more.. via a virtual assistant. The terms of the settlement will be reviewed in court on February 14th. It's happened when users inadvertantly ie..unintentionally, activated Siri. That is,the activating word(s) eg Siri..or in my case Alexa.. have not been used .The conversations recorded were shared with third parties such as advertisers so they could target their ad campaigns. Two claimants said they had mentioned Air Jordon sneakers or Olive Garden restaurants in a converstaion and they received adverts from those businesses. .Another said he'd received ads for a branded surgical treatment after a telephone conversation from home with his doctor. Lawyers..the real winners in such cases, are asking for $28.5 million in fees and a further $1.1million for expenses.
We've had a conversation about this and other like devices on here. I recall saying something to my wife quite recently and Alexa said something like "sorry, I didn't understand that". We were taken aback. We hadn't activated it.
Apple has paid out because it was threatened with a class-action lawsuit...we're talking tens of millions of users here... that claimed Siri violated the privacy of users. . As ever, with these settlements, Apple denies any wrongdoing which begs the question..then why pay out ? That response is the same for settlements we see here that include the infamous."goodwill gesture" secured from businesses after a newspaper gets involved via it's financial letters page. I read them and it's clear a company..most often a bank or building society, has erred so they may as well have payed up,one way or another, before the complainant/victim wrote to the newspaper and thus avoid the ensuing bad publicity.
To get back to Apple. It's no big deal in terms of what each user will get..about $20 for each Siri-enabled device they have ..includes iPhone and Apple watches but, of course, that's not the win. The period of ownership runs from September 2014 to December..just gone. It's estimated that only 3-5% of people eligible will actually claim.
It's embarrassing for Apple because Tim Cook, the CEO, has described online privacy as a "human right". To put the payment settlement into perspective, Apple have made $705billion in profit since 2014.
We've had a conversation about this and other like devices on here. I recall saying something to my wife quite recently and Alexa said something like "sorry, I didn't understand that". We were taken aback. We hadn't activated it.
Apple has paid out because it was threatened with a class-action lawsuit...we're talking tens of millions of users here... that claimed Siri violated the privacy of users. . As ever, with these settlements, Apple denies any wrongdoing which begs the question..then why pay out ? That response is the same for settlements we see here that include the infamous."goodwill gesture" secured from businesses after a newspaper gets involved via it's financial letters page. I read them and it's clear a company..most often a bank or building society, has erred so they may as well have payed up,one way or another, before the complainant/victim wrote to the newspaper and thus avoid the ensuing bad publicity.
To get back to Apple. It's no big deal in terms of what each user will get..about $20 for each Siri-enabled device they have ..includes iPhone and Apple watches but, of course, that's not the win. The period of ownership runs from September 2014 to December..just gone. It's estimated that only 3-5% of people eligible will actually claim.
It's embarrassing for Apple because Tim Cook, the CEO, has described online privacy as a "human right". To put the payment settlement into perspective, Apple have made $705billion in profit since 2014.
