ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — Facebook users across Illinois have begun receiving $397 checks as part of a settlement over the company’s use of facial recognition technology.

To be on the recipient list, any Illinois user who had their face stored by Facebook was contacted by a legal group via email in 2020. The user had to respond to that email by November 23rd, 2020, and fill out a claim form to opt into the class action suit. An email receipt would have been sent to those users.

Residents have reported receiving checks since they began to be mailed out on May 9th.

More than 1.5 million eligible Facebook users in Illinois filed a claim. 

If you responded to the suit but still have not received a check, the settlement administrator updated its website, saying “It will take about two weeks to finish mailing the checks and processing the electronic payments. If you are expecting payment but haven’t yet received it, we ask that you wait until mid-June before making an inquiry.”

The lawsuit resulted from Facebook’s facial recognition search, which a judge ruled violated a clause in Illinois’ Biometric Privacy Act, which prevents companies from collecting fingerprints, face scans, or iris scans without permission.