Coinbase Sued Over Face-Scan System After Ducking Arbitration

Coinbase Global Inc. collected face scans of users of its cryptocurrency platform without their consent in violation of the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act, a proposed federal class action said.

Lead plaintiffs Scott Bernstein, Gina Greeder, and James Lonergan alleged that Coinbase used facial-recognition technology to collect, analyze, and catalog the distances between users’ facial features as part of its user-verification system.

The Coinbase system violated BIPA because the company failed to obtain consumers’ written consent before collecting their biometric information, and failed to make public its biometric-data policies or its data-retention schedule, according to a complaint filed Tuesday in ...