Meta Settles Privacy Lawsuit With Texas For $1.4 Billion Over Biometric Data
Meta Settles Privacy Lawsuit With Texas For $1.4 Billion Over Biometric Data
It’s unlikely to hit the California-based tech company, which earned a profit of $12.37 billion in the first quarter of this year
Elon Musk-owned Meta (formerly known as Facebook) has settled a privacy lawsuit with the US state of Texas for $1.4 billion over allegations that the tech giant used the biometric data of users without their permission.
Ken Paxton, the Attorney General for Texas said it was the largest settlement by a single state.
In 2021, a judge approved a $650 million settlement with the company over similar allegations of users in Illinois.
Paxton, a Republican, stated, "This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world's biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans' privacy rights.”
On the other hand, Meta’s statement read, "We are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including potentially developing data centers."
Filed in 2022, the Texas lawsuit said that Meta violated the state law that prohibits capturing or selling a person’s biometric information, such as face or fingerprint, without consent.
Amid concerns about the technology and its misuse by governments, police and others, in 2021, the company had announced the shutting down of its face-recognition system and deleting the prints of over 1 billion people.
More than a third of Facebook's daily active users had then opted to have their faces recognized by the social network's system.
Facebook introduced facial recognition over a decade ago but gradually made it easier to opt out of the feature, as it faced scrutiny from courts and regulators.
In 2019, it automatically stopped recognizing people in photos and suggested that people ‘tag’ them. Instead of making it default, it asked users to choose if they wanted to use the feature.
Texas had filed a similar lawsuit against Google in 2022. It claimed that the search giant collected millions of biometric identifiers, including voiceprints and records of face geometry, through its services like Google Photos, Google Assistant, and Nest Hub Max. The lawsuit is pending.
