SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal judge on Friday approved a $ 650 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for alleged use of photo-face tagging and other biometric data without the consent of its users.
US District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who have made claims will be affected.
Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy breach.
“It will put at least $ 345 in the hands of any class member interested in compensation,” he wrote, calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested field of digital privacy.”
Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune that checks can be sent by post within two months unless an appeal is lodged.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement so that we can bypass this issue, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, said in a statement. .
The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by not obtaining consent before using facial recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to digitally capture and store faces.
The state’s biometric information privacy law allowed consumers to sue companies who did not receive consent before collecting data such as faces and fingerprints.
The case eventually ended as a class action lawsuit in California.
Facebook has since changed its photo tagging system.