Meta has agreed to shell out USD 90 million to settle a class action lawsuit filed in 2012. The lawsuit alleged that, between April 2010 and September 2011, Facebook tracked users’ visits to third-party websites after they logged out. The tech giant has also agreed to delete the data illegally collected during this time period.
The proposed preliminary settlement was filed on February 14, 2022 with the US District Court in San Jose, California If approved by a federal judge, the decade-old parallel class action lawsuit will be one of the biggest settlements around user privacy violations.
“Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move past this issue,” Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri told AFP.
The class action lawsuit was dismissed in June 2017. But it was reopened in April 2020 after an appeal made to the federal court. Later, Meta’s request to have the US Supreme Court review the case was denied.
Recently, Texas filed a lawsuit against Meta for “secretly harvesting” facial photos and videos for facial recognition applications.
