Judge Approves $650 Million Class-Action Lawsuit Against Facebook
A federal judge has approved a $650 million settlement of a class-action lawsuit against Facebook that claimed the company used its facial recognition feature without user consent.
The lawsuit was filed back in 2015, alleging that Facebook’s use of facial recognition tagging was not allowed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. The lawsuit 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 became a class action lawsuit in 2018. A year later, Facebook made facial recognition optional on its platform.
According to the order by Judge James Donato of the Northern District of California, 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.
“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.
Facebook users in the State of Illinois were required to submit a claim form by November 23, 2020. So you are no longer able to do so if you missed the deadline. You can find more details about the lawsuit here.
