Snapchat accused of collecting confidential user data

Фото: Depositphotos

Two men from Illinois, Jose Luis Martinez and Malcolm Neal, filed a lawsuit against the social network Snapchat, arguing that the technology of this company called “Lenses” violates federal privacy law.

The lawsuit was filed in May 2016, and on July 18 this case was brought to the court of the Central District of California, writes Chicago Tribune.

The lawsuit alleges that through the Lenses app, Snapchat illegally collects, stores and uses users' biometric data - such as iris scans, fingerprints or facial shapes - that are biologically unique to each individual and are used to identify a person. According to the plaintiffs, in this way the company violates the law on the confidentiality of biometric information.

The representative of Snapchat called the lawsuit frivolous and noted that no biometric information is being collected, much less stored with the help of this application.

The lawsuit claims that Snapchat receives biometric information when users, after taking a photo of themselves, use special markers that determine the shape of their face, to further create animation based on their picture, overlay of ears, antennae, or other elements.

The plaintiffs estimate that Snapchat has collected and stored “tens, if not hundreds of millions” of face templates that they generated based on the placement of markers on users’ faces.

The Snapchat privacy policy for the Lens application states that this application uses the recognition of a separate object (eye, nose, etc.), and not the analysis of the user's face as a whole.

“Object recognition is an algorithm designed to understand the general nature of things. This allows us to know that a nose is a nose, or an eye is an eye. But object recognition is not the same as face recognition. While Lenses can recognize faces in general, they cannot recognize a specific face,” the app’s privacy policy reads.

“Contrary to the allegations of this frivolous lawsuit, we take significant precautions to not collect, store or receive any biometric information or sensitive identifiers from our users,” the company said in a statement.

The biometric information privacy law in Illinois prohibits any private organization from collecting and storing an individual's biometric information without prior notice and written permission from that person.

The lawsuit requires damages in the amount of $ 5 thousand for each intentional violation of the confidentiality act, or $ 1 thousand if the court finds that the violation was unintentional.

According to the number of “victims”, the total amount of the requested compensation in the lawsuit is about $ 5 million.

Read also on ForumDaily:

WOW Air: free travel for messages in Snapchat

White House became available in Snapchat

Snapchat bought Odessa startup Looksery

Go to the page ForumDaily on Facebook to keep abreast of the latest news and comment material. Also follow the social network for events in your city - Miami, New York и San Francisco Bay Area.