Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta has agreed to pay a record $1.4 billion settlement with Texas over allegations it used biometric data without permission. Filed in 2022, the Texas lawsuit said Meta violated a state law that prohibits capturing or selling a resident’s biometric information, such as their face or fingerprint, without their consent.
The state accused Meta of using its facial recognition software on photos uploaded to Facebook without users’ consent to automatically tag their faces on its site.
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This marks the largest settlement ever between Meta and an individual state. In 2021, Meta reached a $650 million settlement in a similar lawsuit out of Illinois.
The only other larger claim is a $5 billion settlement the company made with the Federal Trade Commission in 2019, after a probe into the company’s privacy practices.
To date, Meta has now paid more than $2 billion in settlements over biometric privacy claims. Meta shut down its face-recognition system in 2021 and deleted the faceprints of more than a billion people amid growing concerns about potential misuse of the technology by governments, police and others.
Texas filed a similar lawsuit against Google in 2022, accusing the search giant of collecting millions of biometric identifiers – including voiceprints and records of face geometry – through its many products and services. That lawsuit is still pending.
