Facebook has settled a lawsuit over facial recognition technology, agreeing to pay $550m (£419m) over accusations it had broken an Illinois state law regulating the use of biometric details. The settlement was quietly disclosed in the company's quarterly results, released on Wednesday evening, which showed record revenues overall at the company, but also surging costs. It is one of the largest payouts for a privacy breach in US history, a marker of the strength of Illinois's nation-leading privacy laws. The New York Times, which first reported the settlement, noted that the sum "dwarfed" the $380m penalty the credit bureau Equifax agreed to pay over a much larger customer data breach in 2017. Illinois heavily regulates the use of biometric identifiers, prohibiting the collection and storing of biometric information without consent from individuals. The law, passed in 2008, also requires companies to store the identifiers securely, and to delete them in a timely manner.