Keith FitzGerald, chief investment officer at FitzGerald Group, analyzes Apple and explains why Barney & Co.’s Palantir stock is worth $100 a share.
Technology giant Apple on Thursday agreed to pay $95 million to settle a class-action lawsuit alleging that its voice assistant, Siri, violated users’ privacy.
The preliminary settlement was filed Tuesday night in federal court in Oakland, California, and must be approved by U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White.
The mobile device owners who filed the complaint claimed that Apple routinely recorded their private conversations after inadvertently activating Siri. The lawsuit added that these conversations were then disclosed to third parties, including advertisers, who were serving ads tailored to the conversations to some users.
Voice assistants such as Siri can open in response to certain verbal prompts, including “hot words” such as “Hey, Siri.”
Apple is reportedly working on a foldable, thinner iPhone model
apple (Joe Radle/Getty Images/Getty Images)
Two of the plaintiffs claimed that mentions of Air Jordan sneakers and Olive Garden restaurants prompted them to receive targeted advertisements for those products.
Another plaintiff claimed that he received an advertisement for a well-known surgical treatment after having what he thought was a private conversation with a doctor.
Ticker Security Last Change Change % AAPL APPLE INC. 243.36 -0.49 -0.20%
The classes are estimated to have tens of millions of participants, who could receive up to $20 for each Siri-enabled device they own, such as an iPhone or Apple Watch. The class period runs from September 17, 2014 to December 31, 2024, and began when Siri included the “Hey, Siri” feature.
Apple IPO anniversary: How much is a $1,000 investment worth today?
The Apple Inc. sign on Fifth Avenue in New York on Wednesday, May 15, 2024. (Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg via Getty Images / Getty Images)
Apple denied any wrongdoing in agreeing to the settlement.
The $95 million settlement represents about nine hours worth of profits for Apple, which had net income of about $93.74 billion in its most recent fiscal year.
Lawyers are seeking up to $28.5 million in fees and $1.1 million in costs in compensation from the settlement fund.
CLICK HERE TO GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO
A similar lawsuit on behalf of users of Google’s voice assistant is pending in federal court in San Jose, the same district as the Oakland court handling Apple’s case. The plaintiffs in the Google case are represented by the same companies as in the Apple case.
Reuters contributed to this report.
