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Shutterfly customers and non-customers alike have accused the photo publishing company of violating Illinois’ biometric privacy law.
Vernita Miracle-Pond, a Shutterfly customer, and Samantha Paraf, not a Shutterfly customer, say that the company collects and stores biometric data from every face in photos uploaded to its website.
Allegedly, this violates Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act.
According to Miracle-Pond and Paraf, they uploaded a photo to the Shutterfly company website, and at this point, the website’s technology automatically analyzed the photos and identified their faces.
Neither of them consented to do this — even Miracle-Pond did not give her consent for this, though she had an account with Shutterfly.
The Shutterfly class action claims the company makes a practice of collecting information from people in photos even if they do not give their consent, even from people who do not have Shutterfly accounts, as was the case with Paraf.
The individuals say the company collects and stores this data without the customers’ consent, while touting this as a feature that helps identify individuals who appear in photos.
Additionally, the plaintiffs say that Illinois requires biometric information collected to be publicly available, which the company allegedly does not do.
Miracle-Pond and Paraf say that the company began collecting biometric information from photos in 2013 by using algorithms and “advanced image analysis” to identify people in photos on the website. This practice was allegedly expanded from use on the ThisLife platform to all of the company’s websites by 2016.
The information collected includes a scan of the features of a face in the photos, and is supplemented with tags provided by individuals who are invited to identify people present in the photos they upload.
The plaintiffs say “these unique biometric identifiers are not only collected and used by Shutterfly to identify individuals by name, but also by their gender, age, race, and location.”
The customers claim that at no point does Shutterfly notify individuals that they collect and store facial recognition data, nor do they offer them the chance to opt in or out of having their information collected.
The Shutterfly class action claims that the customers’ privacy is violated by this practice, as is the privacy of many other Illinois residents whose photos were uploaded to the Shutterfly website.
The plaintiffs seek damages on behalf of themselves and all other similarly affected individuals.
These claims against Shutterfly are similar to those launched recently against Facebook — Facebook users claimed that the company collected and stored their biometric data without their consent. Facebook fought class certification for this case, and argued that users had not been harmed by their practice of collecting data.
Miracle-Pond and Paraf are represented by Katrina Carroll and Kyle Shamberg of Carlson Lynch LLP, Tina Wolfson, Theodore Maya and Bradley King of Ahdoot & Wolfson PC and David Milian of Carey Rodriguez Milian Gonya LLP.
The Shutterfly Facial Recognition Class Action Lawsuit is Vernita Miracle-Pond, et al. v. Shutterfly Inc., Case No. 2019-CH-07050, in the Circuit Court of Cook County, Illinois.
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