Meta has to pay $90 million for tracking users even after they logged off

Meta has agreed to pay out an enormous lawsuit settlement (and it’s not going to be their last time either). This time it’s to the tune of $90 million. The lawsuit, filed roughly ten years ago, claimed the company tracked users’ internet activity even after they logged off of the platform.

Digging deeper, Facebook allegedly violated privacy and wiretapping laws between April 2010 and September 2011 by storing cookies on third-party websites that contained “like” buttons.

Users gave permission for the social media site to track them while logged in, but it promised to stop after they logged out.

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Naturally, with this lawsuit dragging out over a decade, the company wants to put all this mess behind them.

“Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move past this issue,” wrote a company spokesperson in a statement to Variety.

Meta is no stranger to lawsuits. Just last year, the company agreed to pay $650 million in a lawsuit settlement linked to photo tagging. And just this week, the state of Texas announced that it was also suing the company over its facial recognition program.

In any event, the court will need to approve the proposed settlement Meta has agreed to. If the court approves the settlement, this would be one of the bigger data-privacy class-action settlements in history.

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If the $90 million settlement is approved, it will be distributed evenly across affected users.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.