New Delhi: A federal judge in the US settled the privacy suit against Facebook by ordering the social media giant to pay $650 million as compensation to the people affected. Nearly 1.6 million people filed a case against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
US District Judge James Donato approved the deal on Friday, in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.
He wrote, “It will put at least $345 (roughly Rs. 25,400) into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy.”
Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit against Facebook, told the ‘Chicago Tribune’ that the checks could be in the mail within two months unless the ruling is appealed.
“We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” statement by Facebook
Basis of lawsuit
The petition accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois state privacy law by using facial-recognition technology to scan the photos uploaded by users. The photos were scanned to create and store faces digitally without taking the consent of the users.
Illinois state’s ‘Biometric Information Privacy Act’ allowed consumers to sue such companies that don’t take the user’s permission before their harvesting data such as faces and fingerprints.
