Facebook agrees to pay $650 million to Illinois users in facial recognition lawsuit

Facebook Inc has agreed to pay $650 million as a settlement in a class-lawsuit action filed against the company related to a breach of privacy of Illinois users. According to reports, users from Illinois filed a case against the social media giant after the company violated the state's biometric privacy law when it collected pictures of local residents for its automatic photo recognition technology starting in 2015 that allowed Facebook to automatically tag someone by recognizing their face in the image posted by another user.

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Illinois residents are expected to get somewhere between $200 to $400 from the $650 million settlement, depending on the number of people who file claims. According to reports, California District Judge during the hearing said that it is a lot of money but asked that is it really a lot adding that Facebook has got a 98 per cent discount off of the amount that the state legislature s aid might be due in when a case is proved. Facebook had originally settled for $550 million but the judge listening to the case said that it was not enough in accordance to the state's law and increased the settlement money by $100 million. 

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Case against other companies

Illinois residents have also filed a similar case against other tech companies such as Microsoft, Amazon, and Google, who are also accused of violating the state's biometric privacy law. The case against Microsoft alleges that in its effort to improve its facial recognition technology the tech giant has violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act by unlawfully collecting information of users without their consent. 

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