Illinois residents who use Instagram may be entitled to a payout over a lawsuit.
According to a press release, if you have used the popular social media app in the last eight years, you could be entitled to compensation from a proposed class-action settlement involving the company. The suit was filed by the 18th Judicial Circuit Court in DuPage County, and stemmed from alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act.
Illinois’ Biometic Privacy law prohibits companies from collecting and storing biometric information like the depiction of your face, fingerprints, retinal scans, among other things. The law has been cited in lawsuits against numerous platforms, including Facebook, Google, and Snapchat. The Facebook suit was settled in 2020, with members of the class-action receiving a pair of payments related to the lawsuit.
If you used Instagram while in the state of Illinois at any point in the past eight years starting on August 15, 2015 until now, you may be eligible for a payout. The settlement fund of $68.5 million will be used to pay for payments to users, administration expenses, all taxes, and any fees awarded to lawyers and class representatives, according to the release. An exact dollar figure per payout has not been provided.
Those Illinois residents who used the social media site must complete a claim form at this website by September 27th.
Those who do not want to be bound to the terms of the settlement must submit a letter requesting that exclusion by August 16th. Those who want to stay in the settlement class, but want to object to the settlement or the payouts associated with the settlement, must file an objection with he court also by August 16th.
A final approval hearing for the settlement is scheduled for October 11th, with a decision by the court to follow that date.
More information about the settlement and the suit can be found here.