Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class action lawsuit by Illinois residents who accused the company of illegally collecting and storing biometric data.
The lawsuit was filed by a group of Illinois residents who believed that the Tag Suggestions service, which used special software to automatically tag people in uploaded photos, violated state laws. The lawsuit states that Facebook did not have the right to collect and store users' biometric data without their consent. In addition, the company was required to notify users of the period of time the collected data would be stored. At the time of filing the lawsuit in 2015, Facebook denied all allegations, and in the middle of last year tried to challenge it in the US Court of Appeal.
Now the company has agreed to the charges, as a result of which it will have to pay $550 million to users from Illinois, as well as pay the legal costs of the plaintiffs. Facebook CFO David Wehner commented on the decision, saying the company "decided to settle in the best interests of the community and its shareholders." He also noted that the agreement increased Facebook's general and administrative expenses by 87% compared to last year.
Overall, Facebook's lawyers did a good job, managing to settle the case for $550 million. In 2018, Judge James Donato, who heard the case, noted that "statutory damages could amount to billions of dollars."
Source: 3dnews.ru