Google settles $68 million claim for illegally recording users

Google has agreed to pay $68 million to end a lawsuit that accused the tech giant of using its voice assistant to secretly record smartphone users without their permission.

The settlement was submitted to a federal court in San Jose, California late Friday night. Judge Beth Labson Freeman must still give her approval before the deal becomes final.

People who filed the lawsuit said Google broke the law by recording and sharing their private conversations. According to the complaint, this happened when Google Assistant was turned on by mistake. The company then used these recordings to show users specific ads, the lawsuit claimed.

Google Assistant works like Apple’s Siri. It’s supposed to start listening only when someone says special phrases like “Hey Google” or “Okay Google.” But users complained they got ads after the assistant mistakenly heard something else as these trigger words. The lawsuit called these errors “false accepts.”

Google has denied doing anything wrong

Court documents show the company decided to settle to avoid the risks and costs that come with a long legal fight. The Mountain View, California company did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

The settlement will cover anyone who owned Google devices or experienced these false activations going back to May 18, 2016. The lawyers representing the smartphone users plan to ask for up to one-third of the total settlement amount, which comes to roughly $22.7 million in legal fees.

This case mirrors a similar situation with Apple reported by Cryptopolitan previously. In December 2024, Apple reached a $95 million settlement over nearly the same problem with Siri. That deal got final approval in September 2025, and payments started going out in January 2026. Apple users can receive up to $20 for each device they own, with a cap of $100 if they have five devices.

Google’s record-breaking privacy settlements in 2025

The Google voice assistant settlement is just one of several major privacy cases the company has dealt with recently. In October 2025, Google signed what might be its biggest settlement ever with Texas. The state received $1.375 billion after accusing Google of illegally tracking where users went, watching what they did in private browsing mode, and collecting biometric information, including voice recordings and face scans.

Two months earlier, in September 2025, a jury in California ordered Google to pay $425.7 million. That case involved almost 100 million users who said Google kept collecting their information through other apps even after they turned off a setting called “Web & App Activity.”

Google also settled with state attorneys general across the country over its Play Store. That $700 million deal covered complaints about unfair business practices. Money from that settlement started reaching consumers in December 2025. The agreement involved officials from 53 states and territories.

In August 2025, Google and YouTube paid $30 million to settle claims they gathered personal information from children without asking parents first.

Another settlement from September 2025 dealt with Google’s advertising system called Real-Time Bidding. While no cash amount was set, experts said the privacy changes Google agreed to make could be worth anywhere from $1.4 billion to $21.6 billion.

These settlements show how tech companies face growing pressure over how they handle user information. Privacy advocates have long raised concerns about smart assistants and whether they listen more than they should. The settlements with both Google and Apple suggest these worries may have been justified in some cases.

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