Photobucket Sued Over Plans To Sell User Photos, Biometric Identifiers To AI Companies (arstechnica.com) 3
Photobucket was sued Wednesday after a recent privacy policy update revealed plans to sell users' photos -- including biometric identifiers like face and iris scans -- to companies training generative AI models. From a report: The proposed class action seeks to stop Photobucket from selling users' data without first obtaining written consent, alleging that Photobucket either intentionally or negligently failed to comply with strict privacy laws in states like Illinois, New York, and California by claiming it can't reliably determine users' geolocation.
Two separate classes could be protected by the litigation. The first includes anyone who ever uploaded a photo between 2003 -- when Photobucket was founded -- and May 1, 2024. Another potentially even larger class includes any non-users depicted in photographs uploaded to Photobucket, whose biometric data has also allegedly been sold without consent.
Photobucket risks huge fines if a jury agrees with Photobucket users that the photo-storing site unjustly enriched itself by breaching its user contracts and illegally seizing biometric data without consent. As many as 100 million users could be awarded untold punitive damages, as well as up to $5,000 per "willful or reckless violation" of various statutes.
Two separate classes could be protected by the litigation. The first includes anyone who ever uploaded a photo between 2003 -- when Photobucket was founded -- and May 1, 2024. Another potentially even larger class includes any non-users depicted in photographs uploaded to Photobucket, whose biometric data has also allegedly been sold without consent.
Photobucket risks huge fines if a jury agrees with Photobucket users that the photo-storing site unjustly enriched itself by breaching its user contracts and illegally seizing biometric data without consent. As many as 100 million users could be awarded untold punitive damages, as well as up to $5,000 per "willful or reckless violation" of various statutes.
"Untold punitive damages" yeah, right (Score:1)
Assuming they win, and I hope they do, the lawyers will get hundreds of millions, literally, and the class members will be lucky to get enough for a cup of coffee.
The law is a mismatch for the tech (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
We host nextcloud instances, mail/imap servers, storage space etc. for customers who have privacy concerns. Everything is hosted locally in the country and most sites access is geofenced so it can only only be accessed from the country, web app firewall and ip firewall insure this so at least you have to to use an hop inside the country to attempt anything but we monitor things closely and our WAF (web app firewall) and ip firewall have a bunch of tailored rules.
I guess the solution is back to local econom