{"id":444651,"date":"2026-01-29T07:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/444651\/"},"modified":"2026-01-29T07:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-01-29T07:31:11","slug":"68-million-settlement-confirms-what-smartphone-users-suspected-for-years","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/444651\/","title":{"rendered":"$68 Million Settlement Confirms What Smartphone Users Suspected for Years"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tech giant Google has just agreed to pay a $68 million settlement\u00a0after a class-action lawsuit alleged that its voice assistant spied on users\u2019 private conversations.<\/p>\n

\"\"Google logo on wall-mounted sign at office entrance, San Francisco, California, September 18, 2025. (Photo by Smith Collection\/Gado\/Getty Images)<\/p>\n

Secret Recordings?<\/p>\n

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The lawsuit says that Google Assistant sometimes switches on by mistake and records chats people thought were private. Those recordings were allegedly used for ads.<\/p>\n

Google denies it did anything illegal. But to dodge a long court battle and more bad headlines, the tech giant chose to settle instead.<\/p>\n

Who\u2019s Eligible?<\/p>\n

If you bought a Google device, like a Pixel phone, smart speaker or Nest gadget and it ever woke up without you saying \u201cHey Google\u201d or \u201cOK Google,\u201d you might qualify for part of the payout.<\/p>\n

\"\"An AI-powered app icon, similar to those of Bing, Gemini, OpenAI, Chatbot, and Copilot, is being displayed on a smartphone (Photo Illustration by Jonathan Raa\/NurPhoto via Getty Images)<\/p>\n

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What\u2019s Next?<\/p>\n

The deal still needs court approval. This follows a similar case when Apple paid $95 million over its Siri assistant\u2019s recordings. But the message is loud and clear: your gadgets might be listening more than you thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tech giant Google has just agreed to pay a $68 million settlement\u00a0after a class-action lawsuit alleged that its…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444652,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[230776,230777,1337,64,63,72795,134,230778,230779,9959,44,230780,230781,230782,39295,7461,1996,105,230783],"class_list":["post-444651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-technology","tag-68-million-settlement","tag-95-million","tag-apple","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-class-action-lawsuit","tag-entertainment","tag-google-device","tag-hey-google","tag-law","tag-news","tag-pixel-phone","tag-private-conversations","tag-recordings","tag-siri","tag-smartphone","tag-tech","tag-technology","tag-voice-assistant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=444651"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444651\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}