The popular encrypted chat app Snapchat has become the latest tech firm to face legal action under the Illinois Biometric Information Usage Law.Plaintiffs have filed a lawsuit against Snapchat stating that an avatar generation feature it developed called Lenses collects biometric data without prior permission.The suit claims Snapchat collects biometric information when users take photos of themselves using the Lenses feature, which identifies the size and shape of a user's face and overlays animations like bunny ears or a beard.Snapchat's privacy policy for Lenses states it uses object recognition, not facial recognition, when analysing a user's face.”Object recognition is an algorithm designed to understand the general nature of things that appear in an image,” the privacy policy says. “It lets us know that a nose is a nose or an eye is an eye. But object recognition isn't the same as facial recognition. While Lenses can recognize faces in general, they can't recognize a specific face.”In an email to Chicago Tribune's Blue Sky magazine, a spokesman for the company said no biometric information is collected or stored through Lenses.”Contrary to the claims of this frivolous lawsuit, we are very careful not to collect, store or obtain any biometric information or identifiers about our community,” the spokesman said.

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