“A federal court judge on Wednesday approved banking app Plaid’s $58 million privacy class action settlement after consumers claimed the company had harvested and sold their financial data without consent. U.S. Magistrate Judge Donna Ryu’s order found that 11 plaintiffs from five lawsuits, led by James Cottle, won payment for all impacted customers whose data was sold by the tech startup Plaid using their banking login credentials. Plaid provides bank “linking” and verification services for fintech apps that consumers use to send and receive money from financial accounts such as Venmo, Coinbase, Cash App and Stripe.  Cottle’s original complaint said when he signed up for a Venmo account in 2019, he did not know he was sharing his banking credentials with Plaid. He said the company hid the fact that it was accessing his sensitive financial information by prompting him to login to his bank to set up a Venmo account.  The case was combined with four other lawsuits brought in May, June and July 2020. Other plaintiffs said Plaid designed login screens in its interface to look like screens used by individual financial institutions, but failed to disclose to users that they were not interfacing with their bank.”