Facebook Faces Class Action Lawsuit Challenging Its Use Of Facial Recognition Data

Following a successful test in December 2010, the function rolled out worldwide the next summer, making it easier for users to tag Facebook friends in photos.

The class of people in question is made up of Facebook users "in IL for whom Facebook created and stored a face template after 7 June 2011", according to the court order.

The three users have sued under an IL state law called the Biometric Information Privacy Act, which affords certain people protections over information such as fingerprints, retina scans, and facial recognition data.

The ruling is the latest in a mounting number of privacy headaches suffered in recent weeks by the social-networking giant since it disclosed that Cambridge Analytica, a political consultancy affiliated with the Trump campaign, had improperly accessed the personal data of about 87 million Facebook users.

A federal judge ruled Monday that Facebook must face a class action lawsuit brought by site users in IL who aren't down with the use of facial recognition technology. The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) requires consent before companies can collect biometric data. On Monday, US District Judge James Donato ruled that the lawsuit can proceed as a class action, meaning any person in a defined group can be entitled to compensation.

Donato's decision to classify the suit as a class action means Facebook could be sued by millions of users in the state.

What does the facial recognition do? It is now unavailable in the United Kingdom, but has been a feature in the USA since 2011.

Facebook's motion to dismiss the lawsuit was rejected in May 2016. She adds that managing what information can and cannot be used by Facebook is quite complicated saying, "Even if you understand the Facebook business model, you would be hard pushed to know how far your data goes".

In December 2017 Facebook announced that users would be notified if a picture of them was uploaded by someone else, even if they hadn't been tagged in it.