Facebook parent Meta has agreed to pay $725 million to settle a data breach suit.
Gatekeepers News reports that the social media platform in the long-running lawsuit, was accused of allowing third parties, including Cambridge Analytica, to access users’ private data.
The amount was disclosed in a court filing late on Thursday.
In the filing, lawyers for the plaintiffs said, “The proposed settlement of $725,000,000 is the largest recovery ever achieved in a data privacy class action and the most Facebook has ever paid to resolve a private class action.”
Facebook has not admitted any wrongdoing as part of the settlement, which must still be approved by a judge in the San Francisco Giants division in the US District Court.
In August, there was a report that Facebook had reached a preliminary agreement, although the amount and terms of the settlement were not then announced.
The lawsuit was initiated in 2018 when Facebook users accused the social network of violating privacy rules by sharing their data with third parties that included the British firm Cambridge Analytica, which had been linked to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.
According to the lawsuit, Cambridge Analytica, which has since shut down, then collected and exploited the personal data of 87 million Facebook users without their consent.
The lawsuit further alleged that the information was used to develop software to steer US voters in favour of Trump.
Facebook has since removed access to its data from thousands of apps suspected of abusing it, restricted the amount of information available to developers, and made it easier for users to calibrate restrictions on personal data sharing.
In 2019, Federal authorities fined Facebook $5 billion for misleading its users and imposed independent oversight of its personal data management.
