Why Is Instagram Sending Americans $30 Checks From A Massive $68.5 Million Settlement?

Instagram’s coughing up cash—yeah, real checks—because they allegedly broke privacy laws in Illinois. Apparently, the app scooped up biometric data (think facial scans and similar stuff) without actually letting people know or getting the green light first. Classic tech move, right? Anyway, they’re not admitting they did anything shady, but they’ve agreed to settle for a whopping $68.5 million.

So who gets paid? If you used Instagram in Illinois anytime between August 10, 2015, and August 16, 2023, you could be in luck. People who filed claims are reporting checks for about $32 and change. Not exactly a life-changing payday, but hey, it’s something for having your face scanned.

The deadline to claim your cut? Already passed—September 27, 2023. If you missed it, well, that’s rough. Payments are still rolling out for folks who squeaked in under the wire.

Switching gears, Shutterfly’s got its own mess. They were hit for advertising fake sale prices that, allegedly, tricked people into buying stuff.

Instead of cash, eligible folks are getting up to $25 in vouchers. Again, no admission of guilt, just settling to make the whole thing go away. Claims for that ended back in February 2024.

Instagram in 2022 got slapped with a €405 million fine by Irish regulators over how it handled children’s data. This whole thing has been brewing for a while—turns out, kids’ phone numbers and email addresses weren’t exactly locked down.

 Some teens switched their accounts to business profiles (probably so they could check out who was creeping on their pages), not realizing that would make even more of their info public. 

Meta at the time planned to fight. Not their first rodeo with Irish regulators, either; this is fine number three for them.

Ireland’s Data Protection Commissioner confirmed the penalty, saying, “We adopted our final decision last Friday and it does contain a fine of €405m.”

Meta, for its part, is playing defense. They told the BBC, that this was about old settings we already fixed, and now there’s a bunch of new features to keep teens safe. Accounts for anyone under 18 default to private, apparently, and random adults can’t just slide into their DMs anymore.

Still, Meta says the math behind the fine doesn’t add up, and they’re not just going to take it lying down—they’re appealing and digging through the rest of the decision.

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