Illinois Facebook users due $350

The check is not yet in the mail, but nearly 1.6 million Illinois Facebook users can expect to get about $350 each in a landmark privacy lawsuit.

The totals were disclosed in a California federal court Thursday during the final approval hearing for a $650 million class-action settlement over alleged violations of Illinois’ biometric privacy law.

U.S. District Judge James Donato, who called the case a “groundbreaking settlement in a novel area,” is expected to issue a final approval order soon, though payouts could still be months away.

“This is money that’s coming directly out of Facebook’s own pocket,” Donato said. “The violations here did not extract a penny from the pockets of the victims. But this is real money that Facebook is paying to compensate them for the tangible privacy harms that they suffered. “

The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act is among the strictest such laws in the U.S. and has spawned a number of lawsuits.

It requires companies to get permission before using technologies such as facial recognition to identify customers.

In April 2015, Chicago attorney Jay Edelson filed the initial lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of plaintiff Carlo Licata, alleging the social media giant’s use of facial tagging features without consent was not allowed under Illinois privacy law.

The settlement class included about 7 million Facebook users in Illinois for whom the social network created and stored a face template after June 7, 2011.

Last January, Facebook agreed to settle the lawsuit for $550 million, but Donato rejected the deal. After subsequent negotiations, Facebook agreed to increase the settlement to $650 million, and the court gave the deal preliminary approval in August.

Michael Rhodes, a California-based attorney representing Facebook, said if the case had gone to trial, it could have cost the tech giant “billions and billions of dollars” if it had lost.

“I mean, $650 million, by any stretch of the imagination is a tremendous sum of money,” Rhodes said.

“It’s not something that Facebook wants to do. But we’re also rational, intelligent people trying to manage a very significant risk.”