Facebook’s Meta agrees to $90 million settlement over data privacy breach

Facebook’s parent company, Meta, has agreed to pay $90 million dollars after reaching a settlement in a data-privacy lawsuit surrounding the social network’s use of cookies more than a decade ago. 

The class action suit, filed in 2012, alleged that from 2010 to 2011, Facebook tracked members’ online activity after they had logged out from the site. But the company had only obtained consent to track members while they were logged in. 

An update by Facebook in 2010 launched the Like button plug-in on sites across the internet, which users could hit to highlight their interests to their Facebook networks. 

This plug-in allowed Facebook to gather data about users including what sites they visit, items they viewed or purchased, and communications they had with that site — regardless of whether the user actually used the Li ke button or not. Facebook said at the time that it would not collect user-identifying cookies about a user’s activity on partner websites while they were logged out of Facebook. 

However, researchers found that Facebook did continue to collect information on users after they logged out. 

The settlement is one of the largest in Facebook’s history, but is unlikely to affect the bottom line of the $590 billion internet giant. Meta has denied any wrongdoing despite agreeing to the $90 million dollar deal.

 - CyberBeat