On May 19, Coinbase users from Illinois filed a class-action lawsuit against the cryptocurrency exchange, alleging that its identity verification process violated the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA).
Plaintiffs Scott Bernstein, Gina Greeder, and James Lonergan claimed in a federal court filing on May 13 that Coinbase "massively collected" facial recognition information to meet "Know Your Customer" (KYC) requirements, violating BIPA because users were not notified.
The group alleged that Coinbase did not provide written notice to users about the collection, storage, or sharing of their biometric data, nor the purpose and retention schedule of the data. The lawsuit stated that Coinbase required users to verify their identity by uploading government-issued photo ID and selfies, which were then sent to third-party facial recognition software for scanning and extracting facial geometric data.
