$650 Million Facebook Class-Action Lawsuit for Privacy Violations
A federal judge has approved a $650 million settlement for a class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook. The lawsuit claims that the company used its facial recognition feature without user consent.
The lawsuit was initially filed back in 2015, alleging that Facebook’s use of facial recognition tagging was not allowed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. It claimed that Facebook’s Tag Suggestions tool, which scanned faces in users’ photos and offered suggestions about who the person might be, stored biometric data without users’ consent. The case then became a class action lawsuit in 2018. In 2019 Facebook made facial recognition optional on its platform.
According to Judge James Donato who is overseeing the case, the three named plaintiffs will each receive $5,000 and others in the class-action lawsuit will get at least $345 each, the report said. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who submitted claims will be affected. The deadline for filing a claim has already passed.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, which is headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement.
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