Meta has reached an agreement to settle a class action lawsuit for $37.5 million after it violated users’ privacy by collecting their mobile data through their smartphones without their permission. The preliminary settlement has been submitted to the San Francisco federal court and needs to be approved by a judge.
Meta collected data even when users turned off Location Services on their mobile devices, a violation of California law. Users noted that although they did not want to share location information with Facebook, Facebook used IP addresses to infer a user’s location and then sent targeted ads to them.
The settlement reached Monday covers mainly Americans who used Facebook after Jan. 30, 2015, and in June 2018, Zuckerberg said in a speech to Congress that the company would use location information to help advertisers reach users in specific areas.
