After it was discovered that Meta sold users’ personal information to companies for commercial purposes, Mark Zuckerberg’s company will have to pay those affected who used Facebook between May 2007 and December 2022.

If you are a regular user of the social network Facebook and you lived in the United States, Meta probably owes you money, which you can claim for a cash payment following a class action settlement in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal in 2018.

This class action lawsuit ended in an out-of-court settlement, whereby Meta will have to pay 725 million dollars, money that will be distributed among the 280 million users of Facebook who were harmed by the espionage scandal, where the social network used the data without the consent of the people for commercial purposes.

The company, owned by Mark Zuckerberg, sold user data to other companies and at the same time did not monitor access to the data, this of course was a serious breach of privacy, but above all the security of millions of accounts that were sold to the highest bidder.

From the Los Angeles Times reveal that, if you lived in the United States and used Facebook between May 24, 2007 and December 22, 2022, your data may have been shared with third partiesthis indicates that you can claim a small part of the total amount of money.

How to claim the money from the Facebook class action lawsuit?

Meta owes millions of dollars, but not all users can apply to claim it. Some people cannot, such as company directors, as well as officials, legal representatives, suspected conspirators, and Meta agents.

Likewise, the judges and all judicial personnel who were involved in the legal proceedings during the case will not be able to claim any sum of money either. Either way, Meta has opened a dedicated website to claim the settlementIt can even be paid in cash.

You can access the claim form where you will have to provide data and personal information, such as full name, username and method in which you want the payment to be made. You can indicate your PayPal account, Venmo, Zelle, a check or a prepaid MasterCard.

It is important to mention that you have until August 25, 2023 to file a claim, this means that it is around five months to know if you have obtained approvalif so, the money will be deposited to the account that you previously shared in the form.

Reason why Facebook owes users money

According to official information, the money that will be paid to the affected Facebook users comes from the fund to the plaintiffs’ lawyers for legal fees, which represents 25%. Additionally, an unspecified amount is added for expenses of the same type, which would give a total of approximately 544 million dollars.

The millions of dollars will be distributed among the people who have claimed, which are around 240 millionthen, if you make the account, you will get the total money that Meta will probably credit to your bank account.

A final final approval hearing has been scheduled to take place on September 7, 2023, which is the time when the settlement agreement will be approved. In addition, the fees and all expenses of the lawyers will be determined, therefore, until that moment the real amount that Meta will have to pay to the affected users will be known.