Facebook 400 dollars Facebook might owe you $400.
No, that’s not a scam.
It’s the result of a class-action lawsuit settlement, but to be eligible, you must meet some specific criteria: You’re a Facebook user who has lived in Illinois for at least six months and who was in a picture uploaded to the site after June 7, 2011.
The deadline to apply for checks ranging from $200 to $400 is November 23, according to www.facebookbipaclassaction.com.
The social media platform agreed to pay $650 million to these specific residents of the Land of Lincoln as a result of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act.
“The Settlement also requires Facebook to turn ‘off’ the Facial Recognition setting and delete face templates for most Class Members unless they turn it back ‘on,’” explained the website set up to help people apply for the settlement money.
In Patel v. Facebook, the plaintiffs argued that the company had collected their biometric face data without any notice or consent via the Tag Suggestions tool. Subjecting people to Facebook’s racial-recognition technology in that way was against Illinois law.
The case was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in 2015 and upheld by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit last year.