Facebook Starts Sending Out $345 Settlement Payments: Are You Eligible to Get It?

Facebook has mailed checks to 1.4 million residents in Illinois as part of its seven-year $650 million Class Action Lawsuit against the company.

Illinois alleged in the suit that the social media company broke the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting and storing biometric data of users without their consent through things like facial recognition technology, according to an NBC Chicago News report.

Facebook users more commonly know this as "Tag Suggestions" notifications.

The settlement administrator noted that the checks amounting to $397 or more started getting mailed out on May 9. It will take about two weeks to finish mailing the checks and processing the electronic payments.

Facebook Check Payments in Illinois

The checks are being released only to Illinois due to the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act, a law passed in 2008 that allows consumers in the state to file a lawsuit against companies for privacy violations.

NBC News noted privacy violations include fingerprints, retina scans, facial geometry, and similar data.

The state is generally considered among the most aggressive places in the world regarding regulations on tech.

Eric Allix Rogers, 36, who lives in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood, said that it says something "interesting" about the law they have in Illinois, "that it actually has some teeth in it."

Rogers added they were able to get Facebook to own up to having done something wrong.

About 1.6 million people have signed on for the settlement by December 2020. Checks have been released ever since.

To have filed a valid claim under the settlement, one must have lived in the State of Illinois for a period of at least 183 days or six months.

Even if one is an Illinois Facebook user and meets the criteria but did not file the claim by Nov. 23, 2020, you will not be a Class Action member and will not receive a payout.

The settlement website stated that it will take about two weeks to finish mailing the checks and process electronic payments.

It added that Class Action members must wait until mid-June before making an inquiry if they are expecting payment but have not yet received it.

Illinois Data Privacy Lawsuit Against Facebook

Experts said that what happened in Illinois is only the beginning, adding that more checks from privacy lawsuits are likely to come.

CNBC News reported that Google Photos and Shutterfly incurred similar class action lawsuits in Illinois.

The Illinois law is one of the strictest in the country, with similar laws also existing in Texas and Washington.

The same kind of law is set to go into effect next year in California, Colorado, and Virginia.

Attorney Paul Geller of Robbins Geller Rudman and Dowd LLP said that technology "is great," but features like facial recognition have a dark side to them.

Geller said that people do not realize that the public are being "surveilled more than we know."

Once tagged through the auto-tagged features in photos, users' faces can become available to companies outside their platform's walls.

This article is owned by Latin Post.

Written by Mary Webber

WATCH: Facebook Users In Illinois Could Get Payment In Class Action Lawsuit - from CBS Chicago