Google Faces $100 Million Lawsuit Over Privacy Violation
By Luz Adriana Santacruz Carrillo
The tech giant Google is embroiled in a lawsuit in Illinois worth $100 million, accused of violation of privacy linked to its facial recognition tool.
The Reason Behind the Lawsuit
Google is alleged to have breached the Illinois Biometric Security Law with its facial recognition technology and faced legal action in a Cook County court on May 31, 2022, joined by 687,484 Illinois residents. In September 2022, a judge ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, and Google agreed to pay $100 million to the affected residents.
The amount will be paid out to thousands of residents, and it has been confirmed that those eligible for compensation will receive between $95 to $96 each.
Who is Eligible for Compensation?
Not every Google user in Illinois will be entitled to financial compensation. Eligibility criteria include being a user of the Google Photos service between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, and being a resident of Illinois. Those who meet these requirements should receive a claim form, and the deadline for submission was September 4, 2022.
Cook County reported that over 687,000 people filed valid claims, resulting in payments between $95 and $96 per person.
The Legal Basis for the Lawsuit
The Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, passed in 2008, makes it illegal for a company to collect a customer’s biometric identifiers without first informing them. The plaintiffs allege that Google Photos collected their biometric information without informing them, which forms the basis of the lawsuit.
Initially, it was estimated that the payments to the affected residents could be between $200 and $400. Still, the continuous accumulation of people joining the lawsuit led to the amounts being lowered to $95 to $96 per person.
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