BlockBeats News, May 19, multiple Coinbase users from Illinois filed a class-action lawsuit against the cryptocurrency exchange, accusing it of violating the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA) with its identity checks.
Plaintiffs Scott Bernstein, Gina Greeder, and James Lonergan claimed in a complaint submitted to federal court on May 13 that Coinbase 'massively collected' facial recognition information to meet 'Know Your Customer' (KYC) requirements, in violation of BIPA, as users were not notified.
The group claims that Coinbase did not provide written notice to users regarding the collection, storage, or sharing of their biometric data, as well as the purpose and retention schedule of the data. The complaint states that Coinbase requires users to verify their identity by uploading government-issued photo IDs and selfies, which are then sent to third-party facial recognition software for scanning and extraction of facial geometric data.