Facebook solves privacy lawsuit for $ 650 million

Facebook is allowed to settle a lawsuit in the United States for $ 650 million. Facebook has been sued for using facial recognition technology to ‘mark’ its users. Those users did not know it and did not give their consent

The class action lawsuit was first filed in 2015 in Illinois. According to lawyers Facebook is developing technology to automatically identify faces in photos uploaded by users. Facebook said it did so to make it easier to tag such photos, but the company also violated the Biometric Information Privacy Act. This is a law that prohibits companies from storing and using users’ biometric information.

Not enough

“Glad a deal was reached”

It hopes that Facebook will always openly communicate with its objectives and that users will be able to disable the technology on their account. However, the company felt the storm was prolonging and was pushed to a settlement to avoid a lawsuit. Initially it was ready to cough up $ 550 million, but the judge thought it was not enough, and it ended up being $ 50,650 million. The first three plaintiffs in the case will receive $ 5,000 each, and the 1.6 million people who will join later can each expect $ 345 in damages.

In response, Facebook said it was “delighted to have reached an agreement” and that the company would now leave the matter to its “best interests” to its users and shareholders.

Cambridge Analytica

Earlier this month, a new class action lawsuit was launched against Facebook in the UK. It was started by journalist Peter Juks and revolves around the app ‘This is your digital life’ which collects data from millions of users without their knowledge or permission. The data was later used by Cambridge Analytica.

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