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

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.