Illinois residents who cashed checks they received last year as part of a $650 million biometric privacy lawsuit settlement involving Facebook should expect another payment this month.
A second check of just over $30 was issued at the end of February to those who cashed their initial settlement payments of $397, according to attorney Jay Edelson, who filed the lawsuit against Facebook in 2015.
The second payment will come from around $43 million remaining in the settlement fund after the first round of payments went out to more than 1 million people last May, Edelson said.
“Sometimes there’s leftover money. In this case, not everybody cashed their checks, so because there’s leftover money there’s a second distribution,” Edelson said. After legal expenses, the settlement fund totaled $550 million.
Nearly 1.4 million Facebook users filed valid claims in the class-action lawsuit, which alleged that Facebook violated Illinois privacy regulations with a feature that suggested to users other people to tag in their photos.
A federal judge in California approved the settlement in 2020. The deadline to file a claim and get a check was in November of that year.
