FACEBOOK paid more than a million Americans at least $345 this month for collecting data without their consent.
Facebook users in Illinois were part of a seven-year, Class Action Lawsuit against the company that concluded last year.
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The tech titan – now called Meta – reached a $650million settlement of claims it collected and stored millions of users’ biometric data.
The lawsuit claimed that Meta used photo face-tagging and other biometric data – physical characteristics – on the sly.
According to NBC Chicago, payments started getting mailed out to Class Members on May 9, 2022.
The settlement website says will take two weeks to finish mailing the checks and processing the electronic payments.
Recipients got between $200 and $400 per person from the Settlement Fund, the settlement website states.
Facebook users located in Illinois for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011, were eligible for a payout.
If you haven’t yet applied for a slice of the pie, you’re out of luck: The deadline to file a claim form was November 23, 2020.
The $550million paid by Facebook is one of the largest settlements in U.S. history.
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It surpassed the $380.5million that Equifax agreed to pay to resolve consumer claims over a 2017 data breach that compromised personal information of 143million Americans.
Facebook had originally been sued in 2015, when users accused the California-based company of violating Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act by using facial recognition technology to collect biometric data.
Users said Facebook did this by obtaining data through its “Tag Suggestions” feature.
The online tool allowed users to recognise Facebook friends from previously uploaded photos.
It followed a federal appeals court’s refusal in August 2020 to undo the class action, after Facebook had argued the Illinois users had unique claims requiring individual lawsuits.
More such litigation may be forthcoming.
“We expect Facebook to face similar legal battles at the state and federal levels,” Morningstar analyst Ali Mogharabi wrote after results were released.
Illinois’ biometric privacy law provided for damages of $1,000 for each negligent violation and $5,000 for each intentional or reckless violation.
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This post first appeared on Thesun.co.uk
