Nearly a tenth of Illinois residents were surprised this week to see $397 transferred to their bank account from Facebook. This amounts to almost 375 euros. In 2015, a class action lawsuit attacked Mark Zuckerberg’s firm and, in particular, a facial recognition tool. Seven years later, 1.6 million Americans have finally found cause and get a big sum.
Illinois launches facial recognition technology
Do you remember face recognition? This Facebook tool recognized the faces of your contacts and offered to tag them in messages. The problem is that the network social there was absolutely no consent of Internet users to the collection and analysis of this data. For obvious reasons, Mark Zuckerberg’s app has abandoned this tool as of 2019. However, the damage for some Internet users has already been done. Indeed, residents of Illinois, a Midwestern state in the US, united against Facebook in a class action lawsuit in 2015. They accuse the giant of violating a privacy law that prohibits companies from collecting biometric data without informing the user through facial recognition. tool. Indeed, this particular law, passed in 2008, allows consumers to sue companies for breach of privacy when it comes to fingerprints, facial recognition, or retinal scans. Despite repeated attempts to hush up the case by Facebook, the giant finally agreed to pay a tidy sum to avoid a lawsuit. The invoice amount is salty: the first at 550 millions dollars before revaluation at 650 millions dollars. When on removes 97.5 millions The approximately 1.6 million people who signed the agreement in December 2020 are entitled to $397 each for attorneys’ fees. After all this time, some Internet users have almost forgotten about this controversy. Thus, many people were surprised to see the transfer from Facebook to their account…
