A class action lawsuit accuses online dating giant Match of allegedly violating Illinois' biometrics privacy law by scanning the faces of people using its BLK dating app at the time they registered, to verify their identities.
The lawsuit is one of three virtually identical class actions filed almost simultaneously by the same trial lawyers against Match over face scans of users of some of its various dating apps.
The plaintiff in the BLK lawsuit, Rasheed Walker, claims he opened a BLK account in 2021 and the company requested that he, like other users, upload a real-time portrait of his face, which was then scanned to create a biometric template. This template was used to compare facial biometrics with photographs posted on online dating profiles for identity verification.
Walker also alleges that Match collects, stores, uses, and disseminates user biometric data to enhance its online dating platform and shares facial geometry scans with third-party affiliates. He argues that this practice exposes users to serious and irreversible privacy risks such as identity theft or unauthorized tracking.
The lawsuit was filed under the Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Plaintiffs are seeking damages of $1,000-$5,000 per alleged violation, as allowed under BIPA.
The lawsuit and its demands follow a pattern set by thousands of similar class actions filed against Illinois employers in the past eight years under the BIPA law. Those lawsuits have resulted in a litany of multi-million dollar settlements, and hundreds of millions of dollars in collective attorney fees paid to class action lawyers who file the suits, thanks in large part to a series of Illinois Supreme Court decisions which have interpreted the law in ways that have left most employers largely defenseless against such legal claims.
Notably, the state high court has declared plaintiffs don't need to prove they were actually harmed by the biometric scans, and the court has defined "individual violations" as each time a company scans a user's biometrics over a span of five years before the filing of a lawsuit. When multiplied across thousands of potential users, such potential damage awards could be "annihilative," some judges have observed.
The lawsuit was filed on Feb. 5 in Cook County Circuit Court.
Plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Michael L. Fradin, of Fradin Law, of Skokie; and James L. Simon, of Simon Law Co., of Independence, Ohio.