I don't understand why Apple settled. You can set up a network proxy and verify for yourself that no traffic happens until you manually activate Siri. And what kind of valuable data do you get from "unintended activations" that's worth selling to a restaurant or store? Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
So many people have commented to me that it is strange when you talk about some thing with a someone there suddenly will be advertisements show up about the context. These are the same people that use Siri, Alexa, and Google always on microphone systems.
I cannot verifying if they manually searched for the same content which triggered the advertising.
They even will create a narrative to find the events acceptable. Such as, guess we have to live with it in the modern age.
Reality, only way to prevent possible false positives or corporate spying is to disable it until localized only processing is a reality without any analytics being transmitted.
I don't see how Apple or any other can prevent such false positives when you use this always on microphone system without analytical free localization.
Thought Apple, Amazon, and Google have it scribed in their end use license agreement that conversations maybe processed for quality assurance. An escape clause allowing for any transmission to be retained and accessed by one of their employees or 3rd party processors.
They aren't "always on." Unless you very disingenuously consider The Clapper to be an "always on microphone system."
Honestly, the largest issue is the false activations having too large a buffer.
Advertising these days is insane. I google mattress firm address on my phone... two weeks later a VM exclusively used for gaming opens a wiki.gg page I left in Steam overly... and promptly shows a Mattress firm ad. On the only browser I have without adblock.
> Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
IANAL, but...
Not necessarily.
Bear in mind the other side will also be incurring costs and, if the court were to rule against them, be subject to Apple's costs too.
So if you're going up against a large multinational like Apple, its almost certain that your legal advisors will steer you in the direction of your endgame being an out-of-court settlement.
Also, don't forget pre-trial discovery which is a double edge sword.
Sure you can TRY to go for a discovery fishing expedition against the multinational. Most likely you will fail miserably. But in certain instances settlement can be preferable to potential disclosure of sensitive information.
HOWEVER the other edge of the sword is that the multinational can also take up your time requesting expensive and time-consuming disclosure from your side.
Finally, there's the question of time.
Courts are busy. It may be a year or more until you get your day in court.
Do you want to wait a year or do you want to take that reasonable offer put on the table ?
Bearing in mind of course, that if you reject the reasonable offer, the judge may not look kindly on you...
> Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
Likely this. Also, the more they fight it, the more press it gets.
Even if no data was sent, the accidental activation is very annoying. I disabled Hey Siri on all my HomePods, because I got so tired of it going off while I was watching TV. Now the HomePods are just speakers I have to manually send music to.
Maybe $95m will be enough to get them to improve the feature so I can enable them again.
I was talking with my father, and we said something in french that was close to "siri", and his iphone started talking, answering things like it was a search.
Unless siri activates with explicit user request, I can totally see this happening for many people.
I don't understand why Apple settled. You can set up a network proxy and verify for yourself that no traffic happens until you manually activate Siri. And what kind of valuable data do you get from "unintended activations" that's worth selling to a restaurant or store? Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
So many people have commented to me that it is strange when you talk about some thing with a someone there suddenly will be advertisements show up about the context. These are the same people that use Siri, Alexa, and Google always on microphone systems.
I cannot verifying if they manually searched for the same content which triggered the advertising.
They even will create a narrative to find the events acceptable. Such as, guess we have to live with it in the modern age.
Reality, only way to prevent possible false positives or corporate spying is to disable it until localized only processing is a reality without any analytics being transmitted.
I don't see how Apple or any other can prevent such false positives when you use this always on microphone system without analytical free localization.
Thought Apple, Amazon, and Google have it scribed in their end use license agreement that conversations maybe processed for quality assurance. An escape clause allowing for any transmission to be retained and accessed by one of their employees or 3rd party processors.
My personal advice has been to disable the shit.
They aren't "always on." Unless you very disingenuously consider The Clapper to be an "always on microphone system."
Honestly, the largest issue is the false activations having too large a buffer.
Advertising these days is insane. I google mattress firm address on my phone... two weeks later a VM exclusively used for gaming opens a wiki.gg page I left in Steam overly... and promptly shows a Mattress firm ad. On the only browser I have without adblock.
> Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
IANAL, but...
Not necessarily.
Bear in mind the other side will also be incurring costs and, if the court were to rule against them, be subject to Apple's costs too.
So if you're going up against a large multinational like Apple, its almost certain that your legal advisors will steer you in the direction of your endgame being an out-of-court settlement.
Also, don't forget pre-trial discovery which is a double edge sword.
Sure you can TRY to go for a discovery fishing expedition against the multinational. Most likely you will fail miserably. But in certain instances settlement can be preferable to potential disclosure of sensitive information.
HOWEVER the other edge of the sword is that the multinational can also take up your time requesting expensive and time-consuming disclosure from your side.
Finally, there's the question of time.
Courts are busy. It may be a year or more until you get your day in court.
Do you want to wait a year or do you want to take that reasonable offer put on the table ?
Bearing in mind of course, that if you reject the reasonable offer, the judge may not look kindly on you...
> Is $95 million just cheap enough that they don't want to fight it?
Likely this. Also, the more they fight it, the more press it gets.
Even if no data was sent, the accidental activation is very annoying. I disabled Hey Siri on all my HomePods, because I got so tired of it going off while I was watching TV. Now the HomePods are just speakers I have to manually send music to.
Maybe $95m will be enough to get them to improve the feature so I can enable them again.
Previous and related:
Did Siri spy on you? You could receive part of a $95M settlement - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44004682 - May 2025 (2 comments)
Siri listened in on private conversations, Apple pays out $95M in lawsuit - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43928424 - May 2025 (4 comments)
Note the article linked here from May indicates the deadline for filing a claim passed months ago.
Those aren't preferred "previous and related",they aren't the threads with a notable amount of discussion. Why you picking those nothing posts?
This is the previous thread from then:
Siri "unintentionally" recorded private convos; Apple agrees to pay $95M
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42578929
>Why you picking those nothing posts?
>This is the previous thread from then:
I didn't pick those; they're the ones I saw. I missed the one you added. Thanks.
I was talking with my father, and we said something in french that was close to "siri", and his iphone started talking, answering things like it was a search.
Unless siri activates with explicit user request, I can totally see this happening for many people.
> Cap of $100 per customer
………woo