Facebook has settled a long-running privacy dispute with hundreds of thousands of users receiving just under a tenner each after their personal details appeared in ads on the site without permission.
The names and pictures of an estimated 150 million Facebook members were used in Sponsored Stories, but only the estimated 614,000 users who responded to an email from the site earlier this year will be compensated.
Each person will receive a $15 (£9.65) payout out of a total $20m (£12.9m) settlement, with some cash also going to privacy organisations. The payout was approved by a US court earlier this week following a class action filed in 2011 by five Facebook users. And while District Judge Richard Seeborg acknowledged the $15 payments were relatively small, he said it had not been established whether Facebook had “undisputedly violated the law”.
He added that the claimants could not prove they were “harmed in any meaningful way”. However 7,000 Facebook users opted out of the settlement, allowing them to bring their own separate legal action.
The court estimated that Facebook had made about $73m (£47m) in profit from the Sponsored Stories featuring details of the 150 million members, although the plaintiff’s lawyers claim the legal action has cost Facebook $145m in advertising revenue.
A Facebook spokeswoman said: “We are pleased that the settlement has received final approval.”
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Facebook shells out $20m for privacy claim but users only get a tenner each http://t.co/gAaxtpwcpv #directmarketing #dataprotection