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A federal judge has issued his final approval of a settlement that will see Facebook pay $650 million to end a class action lawsuit alleging it illegally stored customers’ biometric data.
The final approval order was made Friday in the Northern District of California by Judge James Donato, in a case that has been litigated for more than five years.
“The $650 million settlement in this biometric privacy class action is a landmark result,” the judge’s order stated.
The class action settlement is one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation, and it will put at least $345 into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated, according to the order.
Chicago attorney Jay Edelson first sued Facebook in Cook County Circuit Court in 2015, alleging the platform’s use of facial recognition tagging was not allowed under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
At the root of the Facebook privacy class action lawsuit was the claim that the social media company was gathering facial data for the tagging feature. In the lawsuit, Facebook users argued that the social media giant had unlawfully stored their valuable biometric data through facial recognition “face templates.”
These templates allegedly helped users tag photos with suggested matches – but the Facebook privacy class action lawsuit said that the service violated BIPA.
BIPA aims to protect Illinois residents from fraud in connection with their face scans, fingerprint scans and other biometrics. The law includes several requirements businesses must follow when collecting, storing or sharing this data.
The case became a class action lawsuit in 2018, The Verge reported. In 2019, Facebook made facial recognition on the platform opt-in only.
“Overall, the settlement is a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital Privacy,” Donato said.
Friday’s deal does not assign any wrongdoing to Facebook, but the tech giant has agreed to make the facial recognition feature default to “off” globally, with an opt-in feature.
Those eligible for the payout were Facebook users in Illinois for whom Facebook has created and stored a “face template” since June 7, 2011. Eligible users must have lived in Illinois for at least six months.
Approximately 1,571,608 claim forms had been filed as of mid December, the judge said, and there were about 6.5 million potential members in the class.
The news comes as TikTok agrees to pay $92 million to settle a class action lawsuit under the Illinois BIPA, one of the largest privacy-related settlements the country has ever seen.
Plaintiffs claimed the video-sharing app and its China-based owner illegally collected private and personally identifiable data from 92 million United States users, some as young as six years old, and sold the data to advertisers.
Meanwhile, data privacy law is becoming an area of growing interest for the American public with the rise of tech-giants like TikTok, Facebook and Google, and consumers’ being increasingly informed about their online rights.
Click here for more information about data privacy laws, and how to take action.
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74 thoughts onFacebook to Pay $650M in ‘Landmark’ Data Privacy Class Action Settlement
Add me please
I filed a claim for the Facebook class action for Illinois residents I have a claim number do anybody know how to check the status?
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I filled out the class action forms in the fall of 2020. It’s now May 15th with no money received.
Please add me. I was a victim
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