Up to 1.6 million Illinois users could receive a check for $ 345 from the company that improperly stored biometric data
Biometric privacy has cost Facebook 650 million dollars (about 540 million euros). An agreement approved by a federal judge in San Francisco last Friday closes years of legal battle by users against the social network.
The complaint originated, according to the Chicago Tribune, in April 2015. Attorney Jay Edelson filed a lawsuit against Facebook in Cook County Court on behalf of plaintiff Carlo Licata, alleging that the use of facial tagging features by Part of the social media giant without consent was not allowed under Illinois privacy law.
The case was transferred to federal court in Chicago and then to federal court in California. The plaintiffs alleged that Facebook collected and stored digital images of their faces in violation of biometric standards because the company did not have the consent of users to collect such data. Thanks to this, up to 1.6 million users could now receive a check for $ 345 (285 euros), waiting for all claims to be definitively closed.
according to federal law
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement to turn the page on this matter in the interest of our community and our shareholders,” said a Facebook spokesperson in a statement collected by Bloomberg. The case raised several issues about which there is much controversy in the courts, including whether the legal damage to privacy was real and concrete to unequivocally establish that rights were infringed, according to federal law.
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act is among the strictest laws in the United States. And it requires companies to obtain permission before using technologies such as facial recognition to identify customers.
