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SAN FRANCISCO (AP) – A federal judge on Friday approved a $ 650 million settlement of a lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using face tagging photos and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
U.S. District Judge James Donato approved the deal in a class action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Illinois Facebook users who submitted claims complaints will be affected.
Donato called it one of the largest settlements to ever come for breach of privacy.
“This will put at least $ 345 in the hands of each member of the group interested in being compensated,” he wrote, calling it “a major victory for consumers in the much controversial 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 the decision is appealed.
“We are pleased to have reached an agreement so that we can bypass this issue, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders,” Facebook, headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, 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 in order to create and store faces digitally.
The state’s biometric privacy law allowed consumers to sue businesses that had not obtained permission before collecting data such as faces and fingerprints.
The case ultimately ended in a class action lawsuit in California.
Facebook has since changed its photo tagging system.
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