Apple paid millions of dollars to a woman after iPhone repair workers took explicit photos and videos from a phone she had sent in to be fixed and posted them on Facebook.
The incident happened in 2016, when the woman sent her phone to Pegatron Technology Service, an Apple repair contractor in California.
While the phone was being repaired, two workers uploaded explicit photos and videos of her from her phone to her Facebook post, seemingly in a way that made it look like she had posted them herself, the woman’s lawyers said in court documents seen by The Verge.
The repair workers involved were fired, Apple told The Verge.
Lawyers for the woman threatened to sue for invasion of privacy and emotional distress, but the case was settled for an undisclosed amount of money, though it totaled in the millions, The Telegraph reported.
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The woman’s lawyers had demanded $5 million in negotiations, according to The Telegraph.
The settlement included a confidentiality provision and Apple wasn’t initially named in the case.
But the incident became public when Pegatron reimbursed Apple and sued its insurance provider over not covering settlement fees, The Verge reported. In court documents, attorneys stated that the company being reimbursed was “clearly Apple.”
In a statement to Insider about the case, Apple said it takes the privacy and security of customers’ data “extremely seriously.”
“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 said.