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District court preliminarily approves $650 million biometric privacy class action settlement

Privacy/Cyber Risk & Data Security Courts BIPA Class Action Settlement

Privacy, Cyber Risk & Data Security

On August 19, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California granted preliminary approval of a $650 million biometric privacy settlement between a global social media company and a class of Illinois users. If granted final approval, the settlement would resolve consolidated class action claims that the social media company violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) by allegedly developing a face template that used facial-recognition technology without users’ consent. A lesser $550 million settlement deal filed in May (covered by InfoBytes here), was rejected by the court due to “concerns about an unduly steep discount on statutory damages under the BIPA, a conduct remedy that did not appear to require any meaningful changes by [the social media company], over-broad releases by the class, and the sufficiency of notice to class members.” The preliminarily approved settlement would also require the social medial company to provide nonmonetary injunctive relief by setting all default face recognition user settings to “off” and by deleting all existing and stored face templates for class members unless class members provide their express consent after receiving a separate disclosure on how the face template will be used.