How to claim a direct $400 payment for people affected by Google Photos?

There is a diract $400 payment that Americans will be able to claim but the deadline is fast approaching and time is running out. These payments are from a 2016 lawsuit that was filed against Google Photos inside the state of Illinois. Back then, this lawsuit alleges that the Google Photos Face Grouping tool made the federal crime of storing information and details about people’s faces without consent.

It was a massive breach of people’s privacy that Google had to pay for. However, these payments will only roll out to the folks that were specifically affected. Not everybody gets a pieces of this giant pie that is worth $100 million and only residents from the state of Illinois are eligible.

Who is eligible for this direct payment?

The biggest mistake from Google was to not inform users of the purpose their data and personal information would serve. Had they done that, the company would’ve avoided a major legal problem. In the state of Illinois, there is a law called the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).

This requires a written release to be sent to all residents of the state that informs then their data is going to be stored by a company. An act that also needs companies to inform all users how much time their information will be stored and when it may be destroyed for good.

The people who can claim this payment are the Illinois residents ho appeared in a Google Photos image between May 1, 2015, and April 25, 2022. People who want to claim this payment have until September 24 to apply for their piece of that massive $100 million settlement.

Also, this applies for residents who appeared on this image and lived in the state during the same time frame. Claims can be submitted online or via mail. Other companies who violated this law are TikTok, Facebook and Snapchat. They all had to pay millions of dollars in settlements for violating the privacy of Illinois residents.