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Facebook User Privacy Settlement Payments Have Begun, but You Won’t Get Rich

Those eligible for a share of the $725 million class action agreement will be notified by email


a white facebook logo on a blue mobile phone screen
GETTY IMAGES

The long wait for your piece of the $725 million that Facebook parent Meta has agreed to shell out to settle a seven-year-old class action privacy lawsuit is about to end.

Notifications started going out this week by email informing eligible claimants to expect a payment in approximately three to four days after receiving the email. It comes from the address dontreply@facebookuserprivacysettlement.com and includes the claim ID folks were issued when submitting their claim.

The distribution of payments will be staggered over 10 weeks.

Payments will be made through a direct deposit to your bank, PayPal, Venmo or a prepaid Mastercard, depending on what you chose on the mail-in or online claims form, which had a submission deadline of Aug. 25, 2023.

Some people who submitted a claim ahead of that deadline, including this writer, were subsequently rejected for reasons not adequately explained. I was able to appeal, apparently successfully, since I received one of the payment notification emails.

Other claims were thrown out as duplicates or flagged because they were considered potentially fraudulent.

The settlement relates to Facebook user data that was improperly shared with other companies. Those eligible for a share of the settlement were among the millions of U.S. account holders on the world’s largest social network between May 24, 2007, and Dec. 22, 2022.

Class action attorney Danny Karon of Cleveland, owner of the Your Lovable Lawyer consumer website, advised people at the time to file their claims since “it’s found money. Never mind how much or how little you’ll get. The lawyers did a good job. Go, take what they got for you.” 

Some 28 million people heeded that advice.

You are not getting a windfall.

How much you could get not only depends on how many people filed claims, but the amount of time you were on Facebook during the “class period,” as well as the size of legal and administrative fees. 

Authorized claimants were issued one point for each month in which they had an active Facebook account during the class period. The points you received determined your share of the total net settlement.

According to reporting in The Hill, which cited court documents, the smallest possible payment is $4.89, and the maximum is $38.36. The average payment will be around $29, not far off earlier estimates.

Facebook had more than 240 million U.S. users in 2022 alone. All were eligible, but only those who filed will see any money.

Why is this happening?

The backstory involves a British political consulting firm, Cambridge Analytica, which worked with President Donald Trump on his 2016 campaign.

The firm was able to obtain private Facebook user data that could help build voter profiles. In 2018, the same year the class action litigation was filed, Facebook conceded that as many as 87 million user profiles may have been improperly shared with Cambridge Analytica.

What is a class action?

The legal procedure allows one or a small number of plaintiffs to pursue a case on behalf of a larger group or class of people. As part of this particular settlement, Meta admitted no wrongdoing.

The simplest way people had to file a claim was to visit a website, facebookuserprivacysettlement.com, and submit an online claim. You can still visit that site for more details on your settlement payment.

During the submission process, people were asked to enter their name, postal address, Facebook username and email address or addresses associated with their Facebook account, but never their Social Security number.They could submit only a single claim on their own behalf, though family members with their own accounts could separately file their own claims. Having multiple Facebook accounts at the same time was not double-counted.

Worth mentioning: Beware of scammers masquerading as legal beagles who claim they can help you get your piece of a class action settlement. It’s a ruse.

This story, originally published April 21, 2023, has been updated to reflect the beginning of settlement payments.

Edward C. Baig covers technology and other consumer topics. He previously worked for USA Today, BusinessWeek, U.S. News & World Report and Fortune, and is the author of Macs for Dummies and coauthor of iPhone for Dummies and iPad for Dummies. Follow him on LinkedInThreads and X, formerly known as Twitter.