TikTok Hit with Biometric Information Privacy Class Action Over User Facial Scans [UPDATE]

The settlement detailed on this page has received a judge’s final approval, paving the way for payments to be sent to those who filed valid claims.

U.S. District Judge John Z. Lee stated in an August 22 order that he found the settlement to be “a fair, reasonable, and adequate compromise” of the claims at issue in the litigation.

Those covered by the deal should expect to receive their payment soon, pending the resolution of any appeals in favor of the settlement.

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The official settlement website for the class action over TikTok facial scans is live and can be found here:

www.tiktokdataprivacysettlement.com

To submit a claim, visit this page and input the notice ID and confirmation code included in the settlement notice you received by mail or email. If you did not receive a personalized notice about the TikTok settlement, head to this page and select the second option. Parents and guardians may submit claims on behalf of themselves and/or their minor children.

Eligible claims must be submitted online or postmarked by March 1, 2022. Payment will be issued electronically or by check to eligible TikTok users if and when the court grants final approval to the $92 million settlement. If you do nothing, or fail to submit a valid claim form on time, you will receive no compensation from the settlement.

TikTok and its co-defendants deny the allegations lodged in the multidistrict litigation.

Contact information for the settlement administrator can be found here.

United States District Judge John Z. Lee has granted preliminary approval to a $92 million settlement that will put to rest the proposed class action detailed on this page and the broader multidistrict litigation in which it came to be included. 

Judge Lee, overruling the concerns of several objectors, approved the settlement, which ends more than 20 class actions, in a 33-page order entered on September 30. A product of “months of negotiations,” the $92 million settlement will be divided, after costs and fees are deducted, into a total number of pro rata shares equal to the sum of the estimated 89 million people nationwide who submit valid claims and five times the number of Illinois residents (roughly 1.4 million people) who submit valid claims. 

“In this way, members of the Nationwide Class would each receive one share, while members of the Illinois Subclass would each receive one share (for being members of the National Class) plus five additional shares, for six shares overall,” the order states. 

On top of monetary relief, the settlement stipulates that TikTok agrees to refrain from any of the following “unless expressly disclosed in TikTok’s privacy policy and in compliance with all applicable laws”; using its app to collect or store domestic users’ biometric data, geolocation information or “clipboard” content; storing or transmitting domestic users’ data outside of the United States; and pre-uploading domestic user-generated content. 

The settlement also requires TikTok to both delete all pre-uploaded user-generated content collected from domestic users who did not “save” or “post” the content and set up and maintain an annual training program on compliance with data privacy laws for employees and contractors. 

Further, TikTok has agreed to hire at its own expense a third-party firm to review its data privacy training for a period of three years and provide a written certification of that review.

Individuals who are covered by the $92 million deal should receive direct notice of the settlement via email, and the settlement will be publicized more broadly through targeted social media ads, including through TikTok’s “inbox” feature. An official settlement website is also forthcoming, the filing states.

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During a March 2 hearing on preliminary approval, individuals objected to and have consequently held up the proposed $92 million TikTok biometric data privacy settlement detailed below. 

Law360 reports that United States District Judge John Z. Lee declined to preliminarily approve the settlement and moved the hearing to April based on objectors’ qualms about the monetary amount, “embarrassingly low” claims rate and clunky notice plan. 

The judge requested a supplemental briefing on how the parties handling the multidistrict litigation arrived at the $92 million figure, how they addressed differences between adult and minor TikTok users and details as to why those covered under the settlement cannot be notified through the short-form video app. Chief among the objectors contentions is the argument that $92 million is not enough to satisfy the claims of approximately 89 million class members nationwide in addition to 1.4 million in Illinois alone, particularly in light of Facebook’s recent $650 million biometric privacy deal. 

ClassAction.org will update this page as the situation evolves. 

TikTok has agreed to pay $92 million to settle multidistrict litigation that alleged the short-form video-sharing giant and parent company ByteDance improperly used facial recognition technology to collect and store app users’ biometric identifiers. 

The proposed settlement, which includes a $92 million cash fund and meaningful injunctive relief, would end 21 putative class action cases that claim TikTok ran afoul of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act by collecting the facial geometries of users, many of whom are children and teenagers, without first obtaining written consent to do so. The plaintiffs’ 57-page motion for preliminary approval, found here, describes the deal as “among the nation’s highest privacy-related settlements, even in those matters involving significant statutory damages claims.”  

Covered by the proposed settlement are all persons in the United States, as well as a subclass of individuals in Illinois, who used TikTok prior to the court’s preliminary approval of the deal. The injunctive relief component of the tentative settlement will prohibit TikTok from using its app to collect or store users’ biometric information, collect geolocation or GPS data, collect information on users’ clipboards, transmit or store U.S. user data outside of the country, and pre-upload U.S. user-generated content, among other privacy protection and disclosure measures. TikTok will also be required to train employees and contractors in data privacy compliance. 

The plaintiffs’ motion states that the settlement was reached after more than a year of litigation, an “expert-led inside look at TikTok’s source code, two hard-found mediations” and subsequent negotiations. The tentative settlement was reached last September amid former President Trump’s efforts to force ByteDance to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations, a sale President Joe Biden’s administration has since scrapped. 

A TikTok spokesperson told Law360 last week that while the company “disagree[s] with the assertations” and denies any wrongdoing, it would “like to focus [its] efforts on building a safe and joyful experience for the TikTok community” rather than go through “lengthy litigation.”  

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A proposed class action alleges short-form video app TikTok “knowingly entices” Illinois minors into providing images, videos, biometric data and other confidential and private information without first obtaining written consent from a parent or legal guardian. 

More broadly, the 21-page case, filed July 15, claims TikTok and ByteDance commercialize and profit from their “brazen exploitation” of Illinois minors in violation of the state’s Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA). The TikTok app’s proprietary facial recognition technology scans every face that appears in every uploaded video, extracting geometric data on unique points and contours, and then creates and stores a template of each face without informing users of this practice, the complaint says. 

According to the suit, TikTok has captured, obtained, stored, and/or used Illinois minors’ facial scans without providing proper notice, informing subjects that their biometric information was being collected and disclosed, or seeking and obtaining written releases allowing for the collection, storage and disclosure of the data. Further, TikTok has failed to make a data use and retention policy, as well as guidelines outlining the permanent destruction of users’ information, available to the public, the complaint claims.

The lawsuit, found here, says TikTok, a platform full of 15-second videos of dancing, lip-syncing and more, currently sits among the top five most downloaded free iPhone/Android apps and boasts roughly 800 million active users, 40 percent of whom the case says are under 18 years old.

TikTok collects, stores and uses without consent the biometric information of those whose faces appear in videos posted to the social media app, a proposed class action claims.

The latest in a wave of lawsuits against TikTok and ByteDance over alleged violations of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA), the case claims the companies have failed to obtain informed consent before collecting scans of the facial geometries of those who appear in content posted to the short-form video app. At no point do the defendants inform users that TikTok collects, captures, receives, obtains, stores or otherwise uses their unique, unchangeable biometric information, the complaint, filed by a parent on behalf of their minor child, claims.

Further, the suit says TikTok and ByteDance do not disclose what they do with users’ biometric data once it’s captured, nor share any guidelines for how long the data is kept or when it will be permanently destroyed. The complaint can be found here.

A proposed class action filed in California federal court is the latest to allege TikTok and ByteDance have run afoul of Illinois privacy law by collecting app users’ facial geometries without consent.

According to the suit, the teen-centric short-form video app collects a scan of a user’s face each time he or she accesses TikTok’s facial filters, stickers or face-tracker lens. The lawsuit, filed on behalf of a minor TikTok user residing near Chicago, claims the companies have violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act in that they failed to obtain informed, written consent from users before collecting, storing or using their biometric information, and failed to implement and maintain a publicly available retention schedule with regard to the data.

The complaint can be found here.

TikTok and ByteDance are the defendants in another proposed class action alleging the companies’ collection, storage and disclosure of app users’ facial geometries without consent violates the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

Filed on behalf of two minor TikTok users, the lawsuit alleges TikTok and ByteDance’s actions have robbed the plaintiffs and other users of the power to make decisions about the fate of their unique biometric information. This is particularly troublesome when it comes to TikTok given the short-form video app’s connection to the Chinese government, a concern that’s led some U.S. military branches to ban the use of TikTok on government-issued phones, the complaint says. 

“In direct violation of the BIPA, the TikTok app’s proprietary facial recognition technology scans every video uploaded to the app for faces, extracts geometric data relating to the unique points and contours (i.e., biometric identifiers) of each face, and then uses that data to create and store a template of each face – all without ever informing anyone of this practice,” the case claims. 

The complaint can be found here.