In 2020, at least one class action lawsuit was filed against Google – because it was listening to conversations in the house even when Google Assistant was not turned on.
In 2023, Amazon settled a class action lawsuit because it collected and stored children’s voices ad inifinitum.
In 2024, Apple, a company that communicates its focus on user privacy quite vocally, was found guilty of listening to user conversations and using them for targeted ads.
The company has agreed to pay 95 million dollars to users for violating their privacy.
The compensation will be available to Apple users from 2013 – when Siri was first introduced, to December 31, 2024.
While 95 million might appear to be a huge amount, Apple’s net profit in 2024 was 93.74 billion. This means that Apple has to pay just 8.8 hours of profit to settle the privacy violation of 1.38 billion users (active Siri users as of 2023).
Apple’s revenue in 2023-24 was 391.04 billion. On that base, 95 million comes to just about 2.2 hours of revenue.
Question for you: What is the value of privacy to you? What steps, if any, would you take to protect your privacy?