Meta settles $37.5M location data violation case

This is the second lawsuit the company has settled over its practices

Meta, Facebook’s parent company, has settled a case with users over location tracking violations.

The class-action case settled in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California for$37.5 million, covers 70 million U.S. residents who used Facebook between January 2015 and April 2018. 

The issue relates to users turning off their location services on their iOS or Android devices and yet Facebook continued to collect their IP addresses and use them to deduce their location.

The disgruntled users who signed onto the class action lawsuit claimed that Facebook profited from obtaining their locations illicitly for use in targeted advertising, violating both California law and Facebook's own privacy policies.

"Despite Facebook's representation that it will only receive location information from users' devices if they permitted, Facebook has been covertly obtaining detailed location information from users regardless of whether a user has opted in or opted out on his or her device," the complaint reads.

Following the settlement, class members can file a claim via a website — which is not yet live — and will receive payment via check or direct deposit.

This lawsuit is the latest the company has found itself in over its location data harvesting practices. A $90 million settlement was reached back in February.