Why it matters: If you're one of the many iCloud account owners who have paid for extra storage, you may be in for a refund after Apple handed over $14.8 million to settle a class-action lawsuit that claims it broke its own terms and conditions by storing iCloud user data on third-party servers.
As reported by Macworld, the settlement covers anyone who paid for a subscription to iCloud at any time from September 16, 2015, to January 31, 2016, and had a US mailing address associated with their account. If the email used to sign up for iCloud storage during that time is still active, users should receive a notification informing them they are a member of the class-action suit.
The amount of money each person receives from the settlement will depend on how long they were subscribed during those four months and which subscription tier they were on. Apple's monthly iCloud rates at the time were $0.99 (50GB), $3.99 (200GB), and $9.99 (1TB).
Despite settling, Apple still insists that it did nothing wrong and denies breaching its iCloud Terms and Conditions. A Final Approval Hearing will be held on August 4.
If you think you might be eligible, check out all the suit details, including how much money you could get back, on the Williams v. Apple Inc. lawsuit website.
Apple is no stranger to class-action lawsuits, of course. The most recent suit launched against the company involved claims of cracking M1 MacBook screens. It also faced an iPhone throttling case for which it handed over $500 million, and class actions over faulty Apple Watch screens, the App Store, and several relating to the butterfly keyboards, to name a few. But with a market cap of $2.84 trillion, the world's biggest company has little to worry about in these cases.
https://www.techspot.com/news/93926-icloud-users-receive-payout-after-apple-settles-class.html
