Update: A federal judge has now approved the settlement – see bottom of piece for details
An iCloud class action lawsuit has been settled out of court, with Apple agreeing to pay a total of $14.8M to US residents subscribing to one of the paid storage tiers during a specific time period.
The payout was agreed upon after it was alleged that Apple breached the service terms and conditions by storing user data on non-Apple servers …
Macworld reports.
Apple has agreed to a $14.8 million settlement “for breach of contract regarding the iCloud Service that Apple provides to its users.” The crux of the case is that Apple breached the iCloud Terms and Conditions by storing iCloud user data using third-party servers rather than its own.
The settlement includes anyone who paid for a subscription to iCloud at any time from September 16, 2015, to January 31, 2016. You don’t need to do anything to join the class. As long as the email you used to sign up for iCloud storage during that time is still active you should receive a notification that you are a class member.
Apple denies any wrong-doing, but it has agreed to pay the sum to avoid a trial.
A website for the lawsuit explains how payment will be made.
If, at the time the Class Payment is distributed, you are a subscriber to any kind of monthly paid iCloud plan, and you have a U.S. mailing address associated with your plan, you will automatically receive the Class Payment to the Apple account that pays for your current monthly iCloud subscription.
If, at the time the Class Payment is distributed, you are no longer a subscriber to any kind of monthly paid iCloud plan, or you do not have a U.S. mailing address associated with your plan, you will receive the Class Payment by check at the mailing address associated with your account.
You don’t need to take any action at this stage: those eligible for a payout will receive an email with details.
As always with class action lawsuits, don’t expect the payment to be anything significant. The lawyers take their cut off the top, and then the balance is distributed between, typically, millions of people. In this case, the awards will be pro-rata to your storage tier – in other words, those subscribed to the 1TB tier will receive more than those on the 50GB or 200GB tiers.
Update: Although out-of-court settlements are agreements between the parties, it is still necessary in many jurisdictions for a judge to approve the deal as fair. Patently Apple spotted that this approval has now been granted.
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