Apple’s $95M Siri Settlement Payouts Are Arriving: What to Look For
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It’s no surprise that the wheels of justice can turn pretty slowly, but good things come to those who wait — at least, most of the time. Such is the case with a 2019 Siri lawsuit that’s only now paying out for claimants.
If you filed a claim in the 2019 “Siri eavesdropping” lawsuit, you should expect to see a payment soon, as the class payment distribution began going out on January 23. 9to5Mac reports that several folks who opted for direct deposits have already seen them show up, although they might not be immediately recognizable; they’re tagged with the name “Lopez” — the primary plaintiff in the class-action lawsuit. Meanwhile, prepaid gift cards and cheques are being sent out by email and snail mail, respectively.
Which you receive will depend on what you opted for last spring, when applications opened up. If you’re waiting for a prepaid card, you may want to keep an eye on your spam folder, as these often come directly from third-party senders, rather than the settlement administrator.
Sadly, the timeframe for this has long since expired, closing on July 2, 2025, so it’s too late to submit a claim if you haven’t already done so.
Each class member who applied was initially estimated to receive up to $100 — $20 per Siri-enabled device up to a maximum of five devices. However, 9to5Mac says the final payments have ended up being slightly lower, at around $8.02 per device, with a maximum payout of $40.10.
That’s likely a result of there being more applicants than originally anticipated. Apple agreed to pay $95 million, but the total payout is about two thirds of that amount, after legal and administrative fees that add up to approximately $35 million are deducted.
Still, any person in the United States who owned any Siri-capable device — everything from an iPhone, Mac, or iPad to a HomePod, Apple Watch, or Apple TV — between September 17, 2014 and December 31, 2024 was eligible, so it’s probably not surprising that the settlement received 2.4 million claims, many of which covered multiple devices.
The Saga of ‘Unintended Siri Activations’
The case stems from a 2019 whistleblower report that sparked a small scandal when it was revealed that Siri had been “eavesdropping” on some customer interactions — and saving those as recordings to be reviewed by humans. To make matters worse, many of the recordings contained personal information, some of which could be used to identify who was speaking.
While these revelations sound alarming on the surface, it’s important to understand that Apple wasn’t making a habit of recording all interactions with Siri. The recordings in question were snippets of “false positives” — moments when Siri thought someone was calling for it by saying “Siri” or “Hey Siri.” That’s a problem that anyone who owns a HomePod can attest to, but the catch is that Apple was capturing these recordings to try and improve Siri to reduce the number of false positives.
The recordings were still digitally anonymized, as per Apple’s privacy policies, so they weren’t tied to any specific user or device identifier. However, they still included many private and intimate situations like interactions between doctors and patients, business meetings, drug deals, and even couples having sex. In some cases, they also included personally identifiable information, like people speaking out names, addresses, and phone numbers.
In the wake of this, Apple quickly changed its policies to improve user privacy, but that didn’t help those who had been using Siri prior to mid-2019. This sparked a class-action lawsuit, accusing Apple of “unlawful and intentional recording of individuals confidential communications without their consent,” in violation of California’s privacy and consumer protection laws. However, the initial case was thrown out for a lack of evidence — the plaintiffs couldn’t demonstrate that they’d suffered any actual harm from Apple’s actions.
The plaintiffs refiled in 2021 with additional evidence, but they also expanded the case to claim that Apple was selling these Siri recordings to advertisers to target them with custom ads. There seemed to be no basis for these allegations other than purely circumstantial evidence and similar longstanding fears about apps like Facebook doing the same; two plaintiffs claimed to have seen ads for Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants after discussing them in the vicinity of a Siri-enabled device, while another saw an ad for a “brand name surgical treatment” he had only discussed privately with his doctor.
As the case proceeded, Apple decided it was easier to settle the case than fight it, but as with all such corporate settlements, it offered to pay out $95 million while denying “any and all alleged wrongdoing and liability.” In other words, it’s the usual payoff to simply make the case go away, which typically works as the plaintiffs in most class-action lawsuits are more interested in the money than the principle. Some argue that the damages in these cases are still punitive and should help discourage future malfeasance, but it’s hard to consider $95 million a meaningful penalty for a $4 trillion company. Apple had also already corrected its policies before the initial class-action lawsuit was even filed in 2019.
