Meta’s Facebook to pay $90 million for spying user’s internet activity even after they logged out of the app

Facebook (FB)-parent Meta has agreed to pay $90 million to settle a decade-old class action lawsuit over a practice that allowed the social network to track users’ activity across the internet, even if they had logged out of the platform.

The settlement was submitted for approval Monday evening in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. It is still awaiting final approval from the court. Plaintiffs affected by Facebook’s improper data tracking will receive portions of the $90 million. Meta will also be required to delete all of the data it wrongfully collected from those users.

Already considered one of the largest settlements in history of social media biggies like Meta, the agreement will be among the 10 largest data privacy class action settlements in the US – of course, if approved.

“Reaching a settlement in this case, which is more than a decade old, is in the best interest of our community and our shareholders and we’re glad to move past this issue,” Meta spokesperson Drew Pusateri said in a statement to CNN Business. The company has denied any wrongdoing as part of the deal.

The case, filed in 2012, dates back to a 2010 update by Facebook called “Open Graph,” which was designed to give users’ friends a closer look at their activity and interests across the internet. As part of the update, the company launched a “Like” button plug-in on sites across the internet, which users could hit to highlight their interests to their Facebook networks.

The “Like” button plug-in also allowed Facebook to gather data, using cookies, about users’ activity on that site — including, for example, what sites they visit, items they viewed or purchased, and communications they had with that site — regardless of whether the user actually used the button or even knew it was there, according to court documents.