To resolve a class-action lawsuit alleging that it illegally shared user information with Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics business utilized by the Trump campaign, Facebook parent company Meta has agreed to pay $725 million.
The proposed compensation is a response to 2018 disclosures that the third-party company, which declared bankruptcy in 2018, may have inappropriately accessed the data of up to 87 million users.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, who filed a court document on Thursday, this is both the greatest recovery ever in a data privacy class action and the highest amount Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action.
Meta did not admit wrongdoing and maintains that its users consented to the practices and suffered no actual damages.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, between 250 million and 280 million people could receive money as part of the class action settlement. The number of people who submit legitimate claims will determine the size of the individual rewards.
Earlier this year, personal data of more than 500 million Facebook users have been posted on a website for hackers. According to reports, that leaked data is comprised of phone numbers, Facebook IDs, full names, locations, birth dates, bios and in some cases email addresses from over 533 million users from 106 countries including the US, UK, India and Canada. By Justus Adejumo, Independent
