Facebook ordered to pay £466m in photo-tagging lawsuit
A US federal judge has approved the £466 million settlement of a privacy lawsuit against Facebook for allegedly using photo face-tagging and other biometric data without the permission of its users.
US district judge James Donato has approved the deal in a class-action lawsuit that was filed in Illinois in 2015. Nearly 1.6 million Facebook users in the state who submitted claims will be affected.
Judge Donato called it one of the largest settlements ever for a privacy violation.
“It will put at least $345 (£247) into the hands of every class member interested in being compensated,” he wrote, calling it “a major win for consumers in the hotly contested area of digital privacy”.
Facebook, which is headquartered in California, said in a statement: “We are pleased to have reached a settlement so we can move past this matter, which is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders.”
The lawsuit accused the social media giant of violating an Illinois privacy law by failing to get consent from people before using cutting-edge facialrecognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users to create and store faces digitally.