FACEBOOK AGREED TO PAY $ 650 MILLION IN COMPENSATION
The social media giant was sued in Illinois in 2015.According to the report in Reuters, a law firm in the state and a group of users applied to the court on the grounds that Facebook collected and stored the biometric data of millions of people without permission. The company was charged with violating the State of Illinois's Biometric Information Privacy Act.As a result of the years-long trial, Facebook agreed to pay $ 650 million in compensation to close the case in the last hearing."This is a lot of money," said District Judge James Donato for Facebook's $ 550 million offer. "But the real question is, is it high enough? ”he used expressions and did not accept them.If an agreement is reached over $ 650 million, 2 million users will be paid between $ 200 and $ 450.In a statement released a week ago on Facebook, "We want to leave this issue behind us by reaching an agreement for the sake of our community and shareholders as soon as possible."Facebook developed face matching software in 2010 to suggest people's names.Users can turn it off, but according to security experts, there was no clear information about it.In 2012, this feature was disabled in Europe.In 2018, its notification and settings were updated and brought to life in Europe.The facial data of millions of users in Illinois began to be collected later for use in tag recommendations.In the system called Tag Suggestions, no information was given about how long this data would be stored.Facebook faced this case because this violated the Illinois Biometric Privacy Act.Last year, Facebook made a $ 5 billion deal with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission on privacy breaches.As part of this, the company agreed to provide a 'clear and noticeable notification' about face matching software.It was also declared that additional permission would be obtained before the data was used for other purposes.