Facebook faces the largest cash settlement ever in resolving a privacy related lawsuit summing to an astounding $550 million.
The record-breaking $550 million settlement is for Facebook’s violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, reached by a trio of law firms on behalf of a class of Illinois Facebook users. The lawsuit began in 2015
Chicago-based Edelson PC was the first law firm to uncover and bring to light potential violations of privacy by Facebook and other companies. The suit alleged that Facebook collected biometric information in the form of face prints to support the social media’s ‘face tagging’ feature which is a violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act. Facebook has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
Jay Edelson of Edelson PC, “Biometrics is one of the two primary battlegrounds, along with geolocation, that will define our privacy rights for the next generation. We are proud of the strong team we had in place that had the resolve to fight this critically important case over the last five years. We hope and expect that other companies will follow Facebook’s lead and pay significant attention to the importance of our biometric information.”
Illinois is the only state in the United States to have a biometric privacy statute that allows consumers to bring suit for monetary damages if their rights are violated.
Source: Businesswire
