Facebook to pay $650mn settlement over US privacy dispute

A US court has given a final approval to Facebook's $650 million payment to settle a privacy dispute between the group and users in the US state of Illinois. 

According to a report in AFP, the decision was issued on Friday.

Chicago attorney Jay Edelson in 2015 accused Facebook of illegally collecting biometric data to identify faces in violation of a 2008 Illinois privacy law. 

At the end of January 2020, Facebook agreed to pay $550 million after it failed to get the lawsuit -- filed as a class action in 2018 -- dismissed. In July 2020, however, the judge in the case, James Donato, ruled that the amount was insufficient. 

During the trial, it emerged that Facebook was violating Illinois law by storing biometric data -- digital scans of people's faces, in support of its face-tagging feature -- without users' consent. 

In 2019, Facebook proposed that the facial recognition feature be optional only. 

(with inputs)