CHICAGO, Ill. (WTVO) — Google users in Illinois will soon be receiving payments as part of a class-action settlement after the company violated the state’s Biometric Privacy Information Act.
The complaint accused Google of using a face regrouping tool in the Google Photos app to sort photographs without user consent.
“Google failed to obtain consent from anyone when it introduced its facial recognition technology,” the lawsuit states. “Not only do the actions of Google fly in the face of FTC guidelines, they also violate the privacy rights of individuals appearing in photos uploaded to Google Photos in Illinois.”
“The Google Photos app, which comes pre-installed on all Google Droid devices, is set by default to automatically upload all photos taken by the Droid device user to the cloud-based Google Photos service,” the complaint continues. “Users can also connect other devices to Google Photos to upload and access photos on the cloud-based service.”
The lawsuit claims that unbeknownst to the average consumer, Google’s proprietary facial recognition technology scans all photos uploaded to the cloud-based Google Photos for faces, extracts geometric data relating to the unique points and contours— biometric identifiers—of each face, and then uses that data to create and store a template of each face, all without ever informing anyone.
Google reached a settlement of $100 million in the case.
Illinois Google users who filed a claim will receive $95 each.
Class-action members who appeared in a photo in the Google Photos app between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, were eligible for a cut of the settlement.
The Chicago Tribune reported more than 687,000 current and former Illinois residents are eligible for the payment.
Class-action members who appeared in a photo in the Google Photos app between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022, were eligible for a cut of the settlement.
The payments were delayed while the claims were verified.
Google is the fourth company to be dragged into court in similar complaints. Facebook, TikTok and Walmart all have been sued in Illinois for violating BIPA.
In an separate case, Google has reached a $391.5 million settlement with Illinois and 39 other states over claims that it tracked users’ locations without their knowledge. The state will receive $19.5 million as part of that settlement.
The state’s attorneys who filed the lawsuit called it the largest U.S. internet privacy settlement in history.
