Beware of Facebook’s new facial recognition methods which enable Facebook to identify and tag your image, when uploaded by others, without your knowledge or permission. At least, until you withdraw such ‘default permission’ that Facebook granted itself when introducing this capability, without notifying you or seeking your actual permission. This is an important issue for which there are specific, and fairly simple, solutions that Facebook users can follow to control their privacy.
This is an important Facebook privacy report by Ian Paul, writing for PC World (9 June 2011). The full article can be found HERE. As the writer notes,
Privacy advocates are up in arms over Facebook’s new facial recognition technology that helps your friends tag you in photos on Facebook, but is it really a privacy nightmare? The biggest problem with the new feature is that, once again, Facebook has opted-in all users by default, instead of allowing you to choose whether you want to Facebook digitally scanning your face. The European Union’s privacy watchdogs are now looking into the matter to see whether it runs afoul of privacy rules. Security firm Sophos said the facial recognition feature “feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth.”
Fortunately, Facebook allows users to change their aggressive, anti-consumer default privacy settings. In addition, users can request Facebook to remove past photo identification data. Once the request is made, Facebook sends an email reply stating:
Thanks for contacting the Facebook Photos Team. Your photo comparison information has been deleted at your request. If you have any further questions about photos, tagging or photo privacy, please visit our Photos Help Center at the following address: www.facebook.com/help/?topic=photos.
For step-by-step instructions on how to change your Facebook privacy settings so that your images cannot be identified and tagged by Facebook, and to request that all photo identifying data be removed, go to the PC World article.
