Everyone knows that Facebook is free. All it asks in return from us is that we surrender our personal data and make it easy for hackers to access our accounts.
Now, in response to a whopping $650 million lawsuit over all that data settled by the company, Facebook is starting to send out payments to over a million of its users.
The settlement was a long time coming.
The suit , filed in Illinois seven years ago, deals with biometric data — in other words, physical characteristics like fingerprints and photographs. The issue at hand was Facebook collecting and storing photographs of its users without notice or consent, and using it as part of its ‘Tag Suggestions’ feature.
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Over a million people are eligible for payouts.
1.42 million Facebook users in Illinois have signed on to the suit, meaning they’re in line to receive their portion of the $650 million settlement. This works out to over $345, and up to $400, per person.
Payments have been rolling out throughout the month.
Settlement payouts were mailed out starting on May 9, 2022. Processing times can range up to two weeks, meaning that some eligible plaintiffs have yet to receive their check — but they should soon.
Am I eligible for the suit?
In a word, no.
The class action is limited to Facebook users in Illinois who uploaded a photo or were tagged in a photo after June 7, 2011. The deadline to file a claim was November 23, 2020.
It’s a massive settlement.
While the $650 million suit is but a drop in the bucket for Facebook — whose parent company, Meta, brought in over $100 billion in revenue last year alone — it’s still significant. It’s considerably more than the $380.5 million paid out by Equifax for a 2017 data breach.
More lawsuits are likely coming.
After the success of the Facebook class action suit in Illinois, similar class action lawsuits against Google Photos and Shutterfly were also filed in the state. As is the case with the Facebook suit, the issue at hand is privacy.
Why is auto-tagging faces a big deal?
These features might make it easy to categorize and locate digital photos, but there’s a more sinister side to the tech. Facial recognition, once sold to outside companies, can link a person’s face to their personal data without their consent.
Facebook denies any wrongdoing.
While the company settled the suit — likely because Illinois’ strong privacy laws would have ensured a loss either way — the terms of the settlement did not require Facebook to acknowledge having done anything wrong.
We’ll hear more about privacy concerns in the coming years.
The Illinois lawsuit is likely just the start of a larger trend of consumers participating in class action lawsuits to protect their personal data. It’ll be interesting to see how tech companies respond.
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