Dating app eHarmony has been hit with a class action lawsuit in L.A. federal court accusing the company of allegedly violating an Illinois biometrics privacy law by allegedly scanning the faces of users when they upload photos as part of the ID verification process when they register to use the site.
Named plaintiff, Kevin Kohn, an Illinois resident, has accused eHarmony of unlawfully collecting, storing, and using users' biometric data.
According to the complaint, Kohn opened an eHarmony account in 2020, at which time he uploaded a photo of himself to eHarmony to verify his identity.
The complaint asserts eHarmony scanned the photo at that time, and stored a template of his identifying facial geometry, without his knowledge or consent, and without providing notice. According to the complaint, this violated Illinois' Biometric Information Privacy Act (BIPA.)
The complaint argues that the company's practices expose users to serious and irreversible privacy risks.
The lawsuit was filed Jan. 22 in Los Angeles federal court.
While filed under an Illinois law, the complaint asserts the lawsuit should be tried in California federal court because eHarmony is headquartered in Los Angeles, and the alleged scans took place in California, no matter where eHarmony users are located.
The lawsuit seeks to expand the action to include all Illinois residents whose faces were allegedly similarly scanned by eHarmony in the past five years.
The lawsuit seeks damages of $1,000-$5,000 per violation, plus attorney fees. Those damages could increase exponentially, however, as the Illinois Supreme Court has interpreted the law to define individual violations as each time a person's biometric identifiers are scanned, not just the first scan. So, damages could be multiplied across thousands of eHarmony users, whose facial geometry may have been scanned multiple times.
Plaintiffs are represented in the action by attorneys Leah M. Beligan and Jerusalem F. Beligan, of Beligan Law Group, of Newport Beach; Michael L. Fradin, of Fradin Law, of Athens, Ohio; and James L. Simon, of Simon Law Co., of Chagrin Falls, Ohio.