If you used Facebook in the United States between May 2007 and December 2022, you are entitled to request a share of a $725 million settlement that Facebook’s parent company has agreed to pay to resolve a class-action lawsuit against the social network.
Users can enter their information on the website facebookuserprivacysettlement.com to receive payment through their bank account, Venmo, or other methods. The size of the payments will likely be small and will depend on the number of people who submit valid claims and the length of time each claimant was a Facebook user during the period covered by the lawsuit. The payment will be divided among the claimants, with more for those who used the site for a longer time.
Facebook’s parent company, Meta, agreed last year to settle a class-action lawsuit that accused the company of sharing user data or making it accessible to third parties, including the political consulting and data firm Cambridge Analytica, without users’ permission. The class-action lawsuit also alleged that Facebook did not monitor third-party access or use of that data.
The long-running lawsuit was initiated after revelations in 2018 that Cambridge Analytica used private information from the Facebook profiles of millions of users without their permission in one of the largest data breaches in Facebook’s history. The breach gave Cambridge Analytica access to the social media activity of millions of Facebook users in the United States to create voter profiles and allowed the company to assist former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Meta denies any wrongdoing or liability. The company stated that data from up to 87 million users, primarily in the United States, may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election.
Users have until August 25 to sign up by entering their mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers, and Facebook usernames and confirming that they were active on Facebook between May 24, 2007, and December 22, 2022.
Source: The New York Times