SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal judge on Friday passed a $ 650 million ruling in a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo tags and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
U.S. District Judge James Donato upheld the settlement in a class action lawsuit filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in Illinois who filed claims will be affected .
Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for violation of privacy.
“It will put at least $ 345 in the hands of all members of the class who are interested in being compensated,” he wrote, considering it “a great victory for consumers in the highly contested area of digital privacy.”
Jay Edelson, a Chicago attorney who filed the lawsuit, told the Chicago Tribune that checks could be mailed within two months unless appealed against the resolution.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement to be able to overcome this issue, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” San Francisco Bay-based Facebook said in a statement.
The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by failing to obtain consent before using facial recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to digitally create and store faces.
The state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act allowed consumers to sue companies that didn’t get permission before collecting data such as faces and fingerprints.
The case ended up ending as a class action lawsuit in California.
Since then, Facebook has changed its photo tagging system.