(Newswire.net— August 17, 2020) — Instagram is facing a class-action lawsuit after being accused of illegally harvesting people’s biometric data without their knowledge or consent. The lawsuit was filed against Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, Business Insider reports.
The world’s largest social media company – Facebook is again facing a big lawsuit – they are accused of illegally collecting and using biometric data of more than 100 million Instagram users, from whom they also made money.
Facebook has just paid $ 650 million for collecting biometric data without permission, and they have already ended up in court in Redwood City, in California.
As many as one hundred million Instagram users want compensation for the damage they were caused by the illegal collection of their biometric data.
According to the allegations from the lawsuit, such actions are in conflict with the law on privacy of the state of Illinois, which prohibits the unauthorized collection of biometric data.
The law indicates that the company could be obliged to pay the damaged users a thousand dollars per violation, or even five thousand – if it turns out that it was done out of negligence or with intent. In addition to referring to the same legal act, earlier lawsuits were filed against Google and Snapshot, according to The Verge.
According to the text published by The Verge, at the end of July, Facebook agreed to increase its initial offer of 550 million by another one hundred million dollars, in order to end the five-year court procedure initiated by a group of prosecutors. Their lawsuit alleges that the initial version of the user tagging tool, which scans photos and suggests the names of the people on them, stored biometric data without the user’s consent.
A Facebook statement then said that the company was focused on settlement and that it was in the interest of its community and its shareholders to resolve the issue.
The controversy surrounding the use of facial recognition software has been initiated recently thanks to current protests against police brutality, and the fact that technology often misidentifies people with darker skin color, USA Today writes.
Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM have already announced the suspension or restriction of the availability of such technology to the police, and, as Startit Dnevnik has already written, Amazon and Microsoft officially announced in June that they would stop the development and use of facial recognition technology.
In the spirit of the global trend of emphasizing the importance of privacy protection, the first step for any user concerned about abuse could be a more careful disposition of personal information and selfies.