Facebook is to pay $650m to users in Illinois who accused the company of using their biometric data without first obtaining their consent.
Nearly 1.6 million users in the Prairie State joined a class-action lawsuit filed against Facebook in April 2015 in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of plaintiff Carlo Licata.
The lawsuit alleged that the social media giant had violated an Illinois privacy law by using facial-recognition technology to scan photos uploaded by users and by digitally storing data regarding individuals' faces without users' permission.
In Illinois, the Biometric Information Privacy Act allows consumers to sue companies that harvest data such as faces and fingerprints or identify users without first obtaining permission.