During its quarterly earnings call yesterday afternoon, Facebook announced its settlement of a biometric privacy class action for $550 million, the largest privacy class action settlement to date. Illinois-based users brought the action claiming that Facebook’s use of facial recognition without the users’ consent violated Illinois’ Biometric Information Privacy Act. With statutory damages starting at $1,000 per violation, Facebook could have been facing damages well in excess of the settlement amount if it lost at the upcoming trial. Despite the settlement and legal fees related to this suit pending since 2015 and other matters, Facebook reported a profit during the quarterly call. As for class members, it is estimated that each affected user will recover a whopping $200. I suspect that the class action attorneys fared much better than the users.
