If you used Facebook in the United States between May 2007 and December 2022, you can apply to claim your share of a $725 million settlement that Facebook’s parent company agreed to pay to settle a class-action lawsuit, according to a claims website set up by a settlement administrator.
Users can enter their information on facebookuserprivacysettlement.com to get their payment through their bank account, Venmo or other methods. The size of payouts is likely to be small, and it will depend on the number of people who submit valid claims and the length each applicant was a Facebook user during the period covered by the suit. The payout will be divided among claimants, with more given to those who have used the site longer.
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 data and political consulting firm Cambridge Analytica, without users’ permission. The class-action lawsuit, which refers to when one or more individuals sue on behalf of other people with similar claims, also claimed that Facebook did not monitor the third-party access or use of that data.
The long-running lawsuit was filed 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 leaks 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 build voter profiles and allowed the company to aid former President Donald J. Trump’s campaign in 2016.
Meta denies any liability or wrongdoing. It has said that data from as many as 87 million users, mostly in the United States, may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica during the 2016 election.
Authorized claimants will be assigned one point for each month in which they had an activated Facebook account. The settlement administrator will then add up the total points assigned to all claimants and divide that number by the net settlement amount, $725 million minus administrative costs and other fees, to determine the amount of money available for each point. Each claimant will receive that amount multiplied by the number of points they were assigned, according to the settlement website.
Meta directors and legal representatives are ineligible for the settlement. Users have until Aug. 25 to apply by entering their mailing addresses, email addresses, phone numbers and Facebook user names and confirming that they were active on Facebook between May 24, 2007 and Dec. 22, 2022.
The final hearing to approve the settlement is set for Sept. 7 in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California.
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