Meta to pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle lawsuit alleging it illegally captured users’ faces

Meta will pay Texas $1.4 billion to settle a lawsuit aiming to stop the company from using facial recognition software on Texas users without their permission, the state’s Attorney General announced Tuesday.

The use of facial recognition software without authorization from individuals has been a violation of Texas law since 2009. The massive $1.4 billion settlement, which comes two years after Texas filed suit, is the largest privacy fine ever obtained by a state attorney general. 

Meta’s practices violated Texas’s “Capture or Use of Biometric Identifier” (CUBI) Act, according to Attorney General Ken Paxton, whose office said in a press release that the settlement should serve as a “warning to any companies engaged in practices that violate Texans’ privacy rights.”

The tech giant’s data collection not only violated CUBI, but also the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act that’s aimed at protecting consumers against false or misleading business practices, according to the press release. 

Paxton has prioritized pursuing companies using technology to violate privacy, the release said. His office is currently investigating several car manufacturers whose data privacy practices also potentially violate the state’s deceptive trade practices law, according to records previously obtained by Recorded Future News.

The lawsuit against Meta, filed in February 2022, focuses on its 2011 launch of a feature then called Tag Suggestions, which the company said would allow users to more efficiently tag photos with the names of those pictured. 

Meta applied Tag Suggestions to all Texans’ accounts by default and used it for more than a decade without telling users it was in place or how it worked, the release said.

“Unbeknownst to most Texans, for more than a decade Meta ran facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted,” the release said.

CUBI prohibits companies from taking individuals’ biometric identifiers without notifying them and obtaining consent.

“This historic settlement demonstrates our commitment to standing up to the world’s biggest technology companies and holding them accountable for breaking the law and violating Texans’ privacy rights,” Paxton said in a statement.