If you used Facebook at any time in the past 15 years, keep an eye on your bank account.
Settlement payments related to the years-old Cambridge Analytica data breach scandal are starting to appear this month, CBS News reported. The average payment amount will be about $29 per person, with a maximum of up to $38.36, according to a court filing cited by CBS News. The first payments will be sent in September, with the rest coming in over 10 weeks. Anyone who receives a payment should receive an email a few days ahead of time. The total settlement amount has been pegged at $725 million.
See also: Facebook is returning to youth (again)
Those eligible for these payments are people who used Facebook between 2007 and 2022 and remembered to file a claim before the deadline in August 2023. SORRY for those who forgot or never heard of it until now.
The money is related to a court settlement Facebook reached over the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which the British data firm was accused of scraping data from more than 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge or consent. Cambridge Analytica was employed by Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and took some of the credit for Trump’s victory in that election thanks to its recognition of the demographic shifts the campaign exploited.
About $30 per person may not feel like enough to make up for… all of that, but, hey, it’s something.
