United States of America: Judge approves USD 650 million settlement of privacy lawsuit against Facebook

On 26 February 2021, a judge in the Northern District of California approved the USD 650 million settlement in the class action against Facebook over the platform’s use of facial recognition. The lawsuit was filed in 2015 alleging that Facebook violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting biometric data, such as the face geometry without the user’s explicit consent and using it for the automatic face-tagging in photos. As part of the settlement, each of the 1.6 million class-action members will receive in compensation at least USD 345. Moreover, Facebook changed its policy in 2019 disabling the automatic facial recognition tagging on its platform.