I Received $61.36 from the Facebook Privacy Settlement — Here's What My Two Accounts Got, and How to Check Yours

Between October 2025 and June 2026, I received four separate payments totaling $61.36 from Meta's $725 million privacy settlement — split across two Facebook accounts I'd had since the mid-2000s. If you're wondering why your payment was a different amount than someone else's, or whether you're still owed a second-round payment, here's exactly how the process worked, based on what I actually received.

What I Was Paid, and When

Total: $61.36 across both accounts and both rounds.

The gap between the two accounts wasn't random — payout size is tied to how long an account was active during the covered period (May 24, 2007 – December 22, 2022) and how many other people filed valid claims alongside you. My older, more active account consistently paid out more than the newer one in both rounds, which lines up with how the settlement administrator calculated amounts.

Why Payments Came in Two Separate Rounds

A lot of people assumed the October 2025 payment was the final one — it wasn't. Here's the actual sequence:

• First round: Court order issued August 27, 2025; payments went out starting September 15, 2025, over roughly ten weeks, via email from This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. using Angeion Group as administrator.
• Second round: On May 6, 2026, the court approved distribution of the remaining settlement funds. That round began in June 2026 and ran about four weeks.

If you only received one payment and assumed that was it, it's worth checking your email (including spam) for a second notification — the second round caught a lot of claimants off guard.

How Much Everyone Else Got

According to court filings from September 2025, the average first-round payment across all claimants was about $29.43, with a maximum around $38.36 and a minimum around $7.25. My own first-round payments ($29.79 and $21.22) landed close to that average — which tracks, since most active users from that era fall in a similar range unless their account was unusually short-lived or long-lived.

Quick Background: Why This Settlement Exists

The case, In re: Facebook, Inc. Consumer Privacy User Profile Litigation, traces back to the 2018 Cambridge Analytica scandal, where a personality-quiz app harvested data from roughly 87 million users — most of whom never installed the app themselves, but had it pulled from their friends' connections. Lawsuits over this were consolidated in the Northern District of California, and Meta agreed to a $725 million settlement in December 2022 without admitting wrongdoing. Final approval came October 10, 2023, but three objector appeals delayed payouts until the Ninth Circuit rejected them on February 13, 2025 — making the settlement effective May 22, 2025.

Any U.S. resident with an active Facebook account any time between May 24, 2007 and December 22, 2022 was eligible, covering an estimated 250-280 million people.

Meta's Other Privacy Penalties, for Context

• $5 billion FTC fine in 2019 — the largest privacy penalty in FTC history at the time
• £500,000 fine from the UK's Information Commissioner's Office, also 2019
• A 2021 leak exposing over 500 million accounts
• A separate $50 million settlement with the State of California, agreed December 2025

If You Haven't Checked Your Claim Status

If you filed a claim and haven't received anything, or only received one round, check the email address you used to file for messages from the settlement administrator, and check your PayPal or payment method on file for the settlement — payments are processed automatically once approved, with no action needed on your end.