Apple customers in the United States have filed a lawsuit against the company accused of storing their data on third-party servers following their subscription to the iCloud Plus service between 2015 and 2016.

Apple may be paying its own customers. The technology company is preparing to pay out $14.8 million. A sum that the Cupertino firm will pay to settle a class action lawsuit against it, as reported by CNET. This action concerns Apple's iCloud Plus storage service. The plaintiffs claim that Apple stored some iCloud customers' data on third-party servers without informing them (such as AWS, Google and Microsoft Azure).

Between 2015 and 2016

The free version of iCloud allows for 5GB of data storage. To access additional storage space one must purchase an iCloud Plus subscription. In the class action lawsuit, the plaintiffs claim that Apple never mentions the external servers it uses in its marketing materials and terms of service. The facts in this class action lawsuit relate to the period between September 16, 2015 and January 31, 2016.  The current contract for iCloud Plus mentions third-party servers.

The plaintiffs claim that Apple did not have the infrastructure to run iCloud. As a result, the company allegedly misrepresented the nature of its service by "simply reselling cloud storage space on other entities' cloud facilities." They claim that customers would not have paid for such a service if they knew that Apple was not providing the storage capacity itself or would have expected to pay much less.

Small individual payments

Apple does not admit any wrongdoing. But the company accepted the agreement to settle the dispute last January. The deadline to come forward and ask to be excluded from the settlement (and retain the right to sue Apple) is May 23. Then, the agreement must be finally approved on August 4.

Affected by the agreement are U.S. residents who paid for an iCloud Plus subscription, regardless of duration, between September 16, 2015 and January 31, 2016. They must have a US mailing address associated with their account. The exact amount of individual payments depends on the amount of storage that was paid for. At the time the price of subscriptions ranged from $0.99 to $9.99. In 2018, CNBC reported that there were 170 million paid iCloud Plus subscribers worldwide. So the individual payments, paid to each plaintiff, should not be very high.

Source : The Digital Factory