Out-Law News 2 min. read
08 Jun 2011, 12:30 pm
Users can 'tag' themselves and their friends in photos they upload to the site. The tag labels the pictures with pop-up captions to enable people who view the photos to identify who is in the shot by hovering their mouse over the picture.
Facebook is using facial recognition technology automatically to suggest the names of people featured in photos uploaded by users. The company says the automation will make tagging quicker and easier. Facebook's facial recognition technology was launched last year for users in the US and the company has said that the feature is now available to users in most countries.
Facebook users were not given notice that the new feature had been enabled on their account, a report by IT security firm Sophos said.
"Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as many Facebook users are reporting that the site has enabled the option in the last few days without giving users any notice," Graham Cluley of Sophos said in a statement.
"Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags. Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. After the fact," Cluley said.
Facebook said that users could alter their settings so that their name is not suggested for tagging.
"If for any reason you don't want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings," Justin Mitchell, a Facebook engineer, said in the company's blog.
"Just click 'Customize Settings' and 'Suggest photos of me to friends.' Your name will no longer be suggested in photo tags, though friends can still tag you manually," the blog said.
Some users commenting on the blog criticised Facebook's tagging of photos.
"I would like to know why people can go into my photos and tag photos of my son for them selfs," one user commented.
"I really do not like that and do not appreciate the fact that that cannot be turned off or not be an option to others. Just because they are my friends doesn't me I know all of their friends and so on," the user said.
Facebook's settings are too complicated and the company should not automatically introduce new features that affect users' privacy, Sophos said.
"Once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default," said Cluley. "Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission."
"Most Facebook users still don't know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. It's even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge," Cluley said. "The onus should not be on Facebook users having to 'opt-out' of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to 'opt-in'. Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth."
Facebook admitted that it should have told users when it was introducing the new feature for their accounts, according to media reports.
"We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them," Facebook said, according to a report on the New York Times website.
Privacy campaigners the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) criticised Facebook for automatically enabling the new feature for users, the Guardian reported.
"I'm not sure that's the setting that people would want to choose. A better option would be to let people opt-in," Marc Rotenberg, president of EPIC, said according to the Guardian report.
Rotenberg said the system raised questions about whether users' personal data, such as email addresses, would be associated with the photos in Facebook's database, according to the Guardian report.
