You may have received a notification on your Facebook account about a settlement. Even though it sounds a bit shifty, this is actually real. The settlement is a result of a class action suit against Facebook saying that they did not do a good enough job of monitoring who they shared your data with. Don’t get too excited. Though Facebook settled for $725 million dollars, a huge chunk of that money will go to the lawyers that filed the suit. The rest will be divided up among millions of people. We could all be looking at a dollar each once the calculations are finished.
But if you want your share of the settlement, you’ll need to follow instructions to fill out the form. Click on View Settlement details.
Then choose Submit a claim.
You’ll need to fill out a form. Note that the form does not ask for any passwords or personal information besides name, address, and phone number.
Then you will need to choose a payment method. Again, you do not have to provide any passwords. You can choose a pre-paid debit card, one of several payment apps, or direct deposit. I’d probably skip the direct deposit and leave my bank info out of it all together.
This settlement is likely to spawn a lot of scam lookalikes. Remember, the notification for this pops up in your Facebook account. You won’t be asked to enter any password information or provide any credit card numbers or information like your Social Security number.
The amount of each person’s settlement will depend on how many people submit their claims. After that, the payment will be weighted depending on how long you were using Facebook during the time the company improperly shared the information.