Facebook Privacy Settlement May Be The Largest Class Action Suit In US History

Earlier this year, Facebook agreed to pay out a massive $725 million class action lawsuit settlement over allegations that it shared user data with third party organizations. The deadline to file a claim was in late August, and according to lawyers representing the plaintiffs, it could amount to the single largest class action lawsuit in US history.

Lawyers say the administrator involved in vetting these claims received an astounding 28 million applications for a payment, and about 17 million have already received a preliminary validation.

“As far as we can tell that’s the largest number of claims ever filed in a class action in the United States,” said Lesley Weaver, co-lead counsel for plaintiffs in the case.

About 2 million of the claims were duplicates and 8 million were flagged as potentially fraudulent, leaving 1 million cases still to be reviewed. After the lawyers in the case get their attorney’s fees, the class counsel estimates that users can expect a median payout of about $30. However, applicants who used Facebook for a longer period of time will receive a bigger payout. And while that’s a relatively small amount of money per user, this still represents a big-time win for user privacy.




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