Chicago Business Litigation Lawyer Blog
Facebook has agreed to pay $550 million to settle a class-action lawsuit over its use of facial recognition technology in Illinois. According to the complaint, Facebook’s photo-labeling service called Tag Suggestions, violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by harvesting biometric from the photos of millions of Illinois users without their permission and without telling them how long Facebook would store the data. The case proceeded to settlement after a federal appellate court rejected Facebook’s attempt to have the case dismissed and ruled that the case could go to trial. We previously wrote about that decision here.
Under the terms of the settlement, Facebook will pay $550 million to eligible Illinois users and cover the plaintiffs’ legal fees. The firms representing the plaintiffs called it the largest cash settlement ever to resolve a privacy related lawsuit. The settlement dwarfs the $380.5 million that Equifax recently agreed to pay to settle a class-action suit over its 2017 data breach.
Facebook disclosed the settlement as part of its quarterly financial results, in which it took a charge on the case. The sum, while appearing large at first blush, barely amounts to more than a rounding error for Facebook, which reported $21 billion in revenue in the fourth quarter of 2019 alone. This represents a 25% increase in revenue over the same quarter in 2018. Continue reading ›