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Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology in Illinois
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Under the agreement, the amount will go to eligible Illinois users and legal fees.
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The company has disclosed the settlement as part of its quarterly financial results and giving alesson to other technology companies on the use of users' data without their consent.
Facebook Inc. has agreed to pay $550 million to resolve claims it collected user biometric data without consent. The case has been going since 2015 and thesettlement is one of the largest consumer privacy settlements in the history of the United States (US).
The case stemmed from Facebook’s , which uses face-matching software to suggest the names of people in users’ photos. The suit said the Silicon Valley company violated an Illinois biometric privacy law by harvesting facial data for tag suggestions from the photos of millions of users in the state without their permission and without telling them how long the data would be kept. Facebook has said the allegations have no merit. Similar . Cases like these have created a .
The case also illustrates the protections that strong state laws may offer consumers. Of the three states that have stand-alone biometric privacy laws, Illinois has the most comprehensive one. It requires companies to obtain written permission before collecting a person’s fingerprints, facial scans or other identifying biological characteristics. The law also gives residents the right to sue companies for up to $5,000 per violation, which could add up to billions of dollars in payouts for tech giants that lose such class-action suits.
Under the settlement agreement, Facebook will pay the amount to each eligible Illinois users and for the plaintiffs’ legal fees for using their f. The sum dwarfs the $380.5 million that the Equifax credit reporting agency agreed this month to pay to settle a class-action case over a 2017 consumer data breach.
“The settlement will push technology companies to pay closer attention to users concerns over biometric technology.”
- Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum.
The settlement action willbe the reason for a lot of discussion on the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) as very few companies could afford a settlement like this and survive in the technology world.
Facebook disclosed the settlement as part of its quarterly financial results, in which it took a charge on the case. The sum amounted to a rounding error for Facebook, which reported that revenue rose 25 percent to $21 billion in the fourth quarter, compared with a year earlier. The result of quarterly finance has increased profit from 7% and reached $7.3 billion. This quarterly financial increased record of the biggest social media company is boosted by ads on Instagram and video.
“We decided to pursue a settlement as it was in the best interest of our community and our shareholders to move past this matter.”
- A Facebook spokesman.
Class members — basically Illinois Facebook users from mid-2011 to mid-2015 — may expect as much as $200 each, but that depends on several factors. If you’re one of them you should receive some notification once the settlement is approved by the court and the formalities are worked out. The settlement of $550 million would require Facebook to get consent in the future from Illinois users for events like face analysis for automatic tagging of its users.
Facebook said it had 2.89 billion monthly active users of its products around the world, but growth stagnated in the US and Canada on the main social network -- the primary source of advertising sales. Monthly active users hit 2.5 billion on the main network as of Dec. 31, slightly topping analysts’ estimate of 2.49 billion.
Facebook has warned for several quarters that growing at the same rate will be more difficult in the future. The company’s trajectory is limited by the number of world internet users, most of whom already have an account on Facebook or its WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger properties. That means will be increasingly difficult, requiring experimentation with avenues that might not pay off, such as in artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and shopping. Still, the company has managed to occupy an estimated 61% of the market in 2019 by digital ad spending.
In 2018, Facebook reintroduced facial recognition as an option for users in Europe. Last year, the socialmediacompanyupdated its facial recognition notices and settings for certain users, providing more details on how it uses the technology.
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