Meta platforms has reached a $35 million lawsuit in a preliminary settlement after the parent company of Facebook was accused of violating user privacy by tracking their movements through their smartphones without their consent, according to a Reuters report. 

The company filed for the settlement on Monday in a San Francisco federal court, but will require a judge’s approval. The class action lawsuit stated that Facebook had violated California law as well as its own privacy policy by gathering data from users whose location data was turned off. 

As part of the terms of the settlement, Meta has denied any wrongdoing. The settlement will cover people who have been using Facebook since after January 30, 2015. 

The lawsuit had alleged that users who did not want to share their location with Facebook nonetheless had their movements revealed as the company had inferred where they were using their IP addresses. Using that information, Facebook would provide users with targeted advertising. 

The case against Meta first began in 2018 and has been in limbo over the last three years. Lawyers for the consumers who filed the lawsuit are likely to seek 30% of the settlement for their fees, the filings showed, according to the Reuters report. 

Meta is no stranger to controversy as the company has found itself in court increasingly often as the US Congress and the Federal Trade Commission has been clamping down on tech companies in a bid to regulate the industry. Most recently, the FTC has put a hold on Meta’s acquisition of the VR firm Unlimited Within. 

By buying up companies working on VR technology, Meta is trying to consolidate its position as the market leader by making other technologies unavailable to others. Meta’s Oculus Quest 2 is far ahead of the competition and is barreling towards releasing its own mixed-reality headsets, before Apple does.