Nearly seven years have passed since Illinois launched a class action lawsuit against Facebook, accusing the company of violating citizens' rights by collecting and storing scanned images of their faces without citizens' permission. Now, more than one million residents are receiving checks and deposits of $397 each as part of the settlement payment.
The lawsuit filed in 2015 claimed that Facebook's post retirement photo tagging function violated the Illinois biometric information privacy act (BIPA), which prohibits the collection of identifiable biometric data without the express consent of individuals. This includes things like fingerprints, retinal scans and facial geometry.
In May 2016, Facebook's motion to dismiss the lawsuit was rejected, and U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled that it could be conducted in the form of class action in 2018. Despite Facebook's successful request to transfer the case from Illinois to San Francisco, several further appeals to dismiss the case were rejected.
Facebook argued that its actions did not cause "actual" harm, and that BIPA could not be applied because its server was not in Illinois. The company also tried to revoke the class action in the Ninth Circuit Court of appeal, but failed.
Facebook finally agreed to settle for $550 million. After a federal judge thought it was too small, the amount increased to $650 million. After deducting costs and $97.5 million in attorney fees, the remaining compensation will be shared by 1.6 million signatories to the settlement.
Facebook's "suggested tagging" feature uses facial recognition to identify users in photos and suggest tagging them. This feature was closed by meta last year, although it has never closed the door that the technology may return in some form in the future.
Compensation is being sent by check and direct deposit. Interestingly, the packaging of the compensation check does not make people feel that it is worth $394. "To be honest, I almost threw my check away. It was in a brown envelope made of recycled paper. It felt like a paper bag. I thought it must be spam." A reddit user said.