Facebook will get its hands in the pocket after using biometric data without obtaining the consent of its users.
After TikTok , which agreed to spend $92 million to end lawsuits related to the exploitation of personal data in the United States, it is the turn of another big name in digital, Facebook, to find a common ground with American justice.
Mark Zuckerberg’s firm, which faced an Illinois user class action lawsuit over the storage of facial recognition data, agreed to write a check for $650 million to end the litigation.
1.6 million users associated with the remedy
What was the giant Facebook accused of concretely? The social network was accused of having illegitimately harvested and used data from its facial recognition technology, which here scanned the faces of users. The main problem was that this biometric data was being exploited without the users’ consent.
And the aggrieved users associated with the litigation were very, very numerous, since the court decision handed down on Friday, February 26, mentions 1.6 million Facebook members from the US state of Illinois.
This class action was launched in 2015 on the initiative of several Illinois lawyers, alerted by several plaintiffs, Adam Pezen, Nimesh Patel and Carlo Licata. All blamed Facebook for violating state privacy law through a photo tagging and face identification system based on biometric data.
The class action, the key against the practices of the digital giants?
The plaintiffs and Facebook have therefore reached an agreement with the American justice system on the amicable settlement of this case, considered one of the biggest scandals in terms of digital privacy violation. Facebook will have to pay $5,000 to each of the three original plaintiffs, and $ 345 to the remaining 1.6 million users.
The remaining $100 million will be used to cover administration costs, taxes and other fees. “The balance will be distributed pro rata to each member of the group who submits a valid claim,” said the court decision. You will be left to judge the monetary value of such data or not.
Since 2019, Facebook has put water in its wine by modifying the identification system, making facial recognition only an optional feature. That’s already taken.
This case shows in any case that the class action seems to be a very effective solution to resolve any dispute facing a large digital company.
For several weeks, Facebook has been the subject of another appeal, before the High Court in London, where the company is accused of not having blocked access to third parties to the data of a million English and Welsh users.