Cryptocurrency Exchange Coinbase is confronted with a Class-Action right case in the US state of Illinois, which claims that the company has violated the State’s biometric information privacy law.
A group of coinbase customers has accused the platform of incorrect collecting and storing facial data during its identity verification process.
Submitted to the American court for the Northern district of Illinois on 13 May, the court case claims that Coinbase’s know that your customer controls of scanning users without the correct notification or permission of the scanning, a movement that the claimants say, say that the biometric privacy laws of Illinois break directly.
According to the complaint, users had to upload an ID and a Selfie, which were subsequently processed by external face recognition software.
The group claims that this process has recorded their biometric identification data, such as FacePrints, without prior written notification or notification of the collection without a publicly available “retention schedule or guidelines” for data destruction, as required under BIPA.
‘[…] At no time during the verification process are Coinbase users who are asked to give permission for collecting their biometric information, reported that their biometric data will be collected by a non -related third party, nor with information about the process, how it works, the type of information and collected data, whether this data is stored or the preservation of the retention or information is stored or information. “
Bernstein v. Coinbase Global, Inc.
According to the complaint, Coinbase sent facial data to suppliers of third parties, including Jumio, Onfido, AU10TIX and Solaris, without getting explicit permission.
It also claims that more than 10,000 people have applied for an arbitration about these issues, but Coinbase has reportedly not paid the necessary arbitration costs, so that many of these matters are rejected.
That said, the group insists on financial fines of a maximum of $ 5,000 per reckless violation, or $ 1,000 where negligence is found, in addition to legal costs and provisional exemption.
At the time of writing, Coinbase did not publicly comment on the court case.
Interestingly, this is not the first time that Coinbase has been in hot water due to alleged BIPA violations in Illinois. As previously reported by Crypto.news, a Class-Action right case was brought by a local in May 2023 aimed at the exchange of facial data and fingerprint templates via his mobile app.
That case was eventually paused after a judge approved the Coinbase motion to move the dispute to arbitration. The lawsuit was rejected without prejudice in February of this year, after both parties agreed to drop the case.
Even worse, Coinbase has also been fire about a recent data breach in which customer support agents are allegedly bribed to leak user data. Since then, at least six -related lawsuits have been established, which means that the research is started on the handling of sensitive information by the platform.
In other news, Illinois recently dropped a separate lawsuit against Coinbase about the deployment program, after similar movements of Kentucky, Vermont and South Carolina after the SEC had rejected his own business.
