Apple has agreed to pay ‘millions of dollars’ in compensation to a 21-year-old student after iPhone repair techs posted personal explicit images and videos of her to social media.
The settlement, first reported by The Telegraph, notes that a 21-year-old student in Oregon took her phone to a repair center in California in 2016, operated by Apple contractor Pegatron.
A pair of techs working on repairing the device subsequently posted ’10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video’ to Facebook, making it seem as if she posted them.
The images were later deleted only after the woman’s friends told her about them.
The breach happened at a repair facility in a suburb of Sacramento, California
Apple was not named in the lawsuit, only referred to as a ‘customer’ to keep the matter private.
Apple has paid ‘millions of dollars’ in compensation to a 21-year-old student that had explicit images and videos posted to social media by iPhone repair techs
The techs posted ’10 photos of her in various stages of undress and a sex video’ to the woman’s Facebook account, making it seem as if she posted them
Apple has put a lot of time and effort into making privacy one of its selling points
The company was then later named as the ‘customer’ in a separate, unrelated lawsuit, The Telegraph added.
The woman, who has not been named, sent her phone to the tech giant after it stopped working.
The employees were subsequently fired.
It’s unclear the exact amount Apple compensated the student with, but legal filings show her lawyers were asking for $5 million for ‘severe emotional distress.’
Apple has not yet responded to DailyMail.com, but a company spokesperson told The Telegraph it took immediate action after becoming aware of the situation.
‘We take the privacy and security of our customers’ data extremely seriously and have a number of protocols in place to ensure data is protected throughout the repair process,’ the spokesman told the news outlet. ‘When we learned of this egregious violation of our policies at one of our vendors in 2016, we took immediate action and have since continued to strengthen our vendor protocols.’
Apple, of course, has put a lot of time and effort into making privacy one of its selling points.
At the company’s worldwide developer conference on Monday, the Cupertino, Calif.-based is expected to announce new privacy-related features to its operating systems and devices, including the iPhone.
As recently as 2019, Apple had continued to take steps to undercut ‘unauthorized’ repairs to its devices from third-parties, saying it would impact customer privacy.
That mindset began to change later that year, after the company unveiled the Independent Repair Provider program.
At first, this program only allowed iPhones that were out of warranty to be fixed by third-party providers.
In 2020, Apple signed a deal with Best Buy to allow the Minneapolis-based retailer’s technicians fix iPhones at any Best Buy store in the United States.
Earlier this year, Apple said the Independent Repair Provider program was expanding around the globe to more than 200 countries to ‘to offer safe and reliable repairs for Apple products.’
There are now more than 1,500 Independent Repair Provider locations serving customers across the US, Canada, and Europe.
