A federal court has reportedly said that Facebook will have to face a class-action lawsuit for allegedly misusing users’ facial recognition data in Illinois. The lawsuit could cost the company up to $35 billion. Firstpost reports: Facebook has been trying to avoid the lawsuit for a few years now. The lawsuit began in 2015 when Illinois users accused Facebook of violating that state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act in collecting biometric data. The U.S. court, however, has denied Facebook’s request for an en banc hearing before the full slate of ninth circuit judges that could have halted the case. Now the case will go to trial unless the Supreme Court intercedes. Facebook allegedly accomplished the said misuse of facial recognition data through its ‘Tag Suggestions’ feature, which allowed users to recognize their Facebook friends from previously uploaded photos. The suit alleges that Illinois citizens didn’t consent to having their uploaded photos scanned with facial recognition and weren’t informed of how long the data would be saved when the mapping started in 2011. According to the report, Facebook could face $1,000 to $5,000 in penalties per user for 7 million people, which could sum to a maximum of $35 billion.
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https://yro.slashdot.org/story/19/10/22/2230254/facebook-to-face-35-billion-class-action-lawsuit-over-misuse-of-facial-recognition-data?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed