Google has reached an agreement of 100 million dollars following a class action lawsuit in the United States over privacy issues in the Google Photos app.
The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit, alleging that the company had violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
This law establishes that any private company that collects biometric data — defined as retina or iris scanner, fingerprint, voice, face or hands — must have a publicly available written policy stating how long data will be retained and how they will be destroyed at the end of their useful life.
Google Photos analyze data about the geometry of each person’s face to identify it and group photos of the same person. The problem is that Google did not inform users that it was collecting their biometric data.
Google is actively collecting, storing and using – without notice, without obtaining informed written consent and without publishing data retention policies – the biometric data of millions of unwitting people whose faces appear in photographs uploaded to Google Photos in Illinois.
Specifically, Google has created, collected and stored, in conjunction with its cloud-based “Google Photos” service, millions of “face templates” (or “face models”) – highly detailed geometric maps of the face – from millions of Google users. Google Photos.
Illinois residents can now claim their money if they appeared in an image in the Google Photos app between May 1, 2015 and April 25, 2022. Although the exact payment per person is not yet clear, It will range between 200 and 400 dollars per person.
At the moment, we do not know if the lawsuit will extend to other states or countries with similar legislation.
