Texas secures massive $1.4 million settlement over Meta's secret use of facial recognition in Facebook photos

Texas reached a $1.4 billion settlement with Meta on Tuesday over the use of facial recognition scans, according to a news release.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit against Meta in February 2022 for allegedly storing facial recognition data obtained by scanning images on Facebook, in violation of the Texas Biometric Identifier Capture or Use Act (CUBI) and the Deceptive Trade Practices Act (DTPA). seconds in court documents. The settlement is the largest ever obtained by a single state and by a single attorney general in history, seconds in the press release.

“After vigorously pursuing justice for our citizens whose privacy rights were violated by Meta's use of facial recognition software, I am proud to announce that we have reached the largest settlement ever obtained based on an action brought by a single state,” Paxton said in the news release. “This landmark settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world's largest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating the privacy rights of Texans. Any misuse of Texans' sensitive data will be met with full force of law”.

Meta admitted no wrongdoing, seconds to the final settlement documents. Facebook stopped using its facial recognition software in 2021, seconds on your website.

“We are pleased to resolve this matter and look forward to exploring future opportunities to deepen our business investments in Texas, including the potential development of data centers,” a Meta spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The “Tag Suggestions” feature was introduced to Facebook in 2011, allowing users to more easily find people to “tag” in their photos, according to the press release. The feature used facial recognition technology to scan faces, but Meta allegedly failed to warn users of how the technology worked and did not ask users for permission, which allegedly violated CUBI.

“The extent of Facebook's misconduct is staggering,” Paxton said in the 2021 lawsuit. “Facebook repeatedly captured the biometric identifiers of Texans without consent, not hundreds, thousands or millions of times, but billions of times, all in violation of CUBI and DTPA.”

Meta has come under scrutiny for privacy violations before, as Meta shareholders filed a class-action lawsuit in 2018 suing the company for misuse and failure to protect user information from a data breach that occurred in 2015, which engaged 87 million users. seconds to Reuters. The lawsuit was dismissed in 2020, but was revived in 2023 by a federal appeals court and has since been upheld by the Supreme Court as of June 2024. seconds to Reuters.

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