【Schoolmistress 2】

Every now and Schoolmistress 2then, the world blesses us with an opportunity to get money froma giant tech company. This is one of those times.

If you owned a Siri-enabled device and experienced an "unintended Siri activation during a confidential or private communication" between Sept. 17, 2014 and Dec. 31, 2024, you may be eligible for up to $100 in cash from Apple. There's a website where you can read all the specific rules of this class-action settlement and submit claims, with a deadline of July 2. You can submit claims for up to five devices, and there's a payout cap of up to $20 per device, so you could theoreticallyget as much as $100 from this settlement. Of course, submitting a claim doesn't guarantee you will receive money.

This is the conclusion of a lawsuit that started in 2019 and ended in January of this year, with Apple agreeing to pay out a $95 million settlement for Siri (and third-party contractors) listening in on private conversations. Apple claims it only gave Siri recordings to those contractors for quality-control testing and never sold anyone's conversations to advertisers.

"Apple has never used Siri data to build marketing profiles, never made it available for advertising, and never sold it to anyone for any purpose," the company said in a statement at the time.

• The Apple M4 MacBook Pro is in freefall — get it for its lowest-ever price
• Apple is working on a chip for smart glasses, report claims
• Google's stock falls as Apple actively considers AI search for Safari

Regardless, some Apple customers can at least get some cash out of it now.