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If your face is among the hundreds of millions of images on Facebook — by your own doing or not — you’ve got a stake in a worldwide debate over a technical change that hasprivacy advocates in a lather.
The colossal social network has been adding facial recognition software to its arsenal to automate the practice known as tagging, or adding people’s names to photos. Facebook already possesses a massive database of images connected to names that would continue to grow from the photos you add and the names you associate unless you specifically reject the practice.
Facebook has already acknowledged it is cooperating with regulators in the European Union, who have raised questions. And now the company is facing a call for an investigation by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) and other privacy groups have joined together to file a complaint with the FTC after Facebook said it was using biometrics and had been rolling out the technology for months.
Facebook say there’s nothing wrong with what it’s doing and that for any user concerned about privacy issues there’s an easy out.
“We launched Tag Suggestions to assist people when they are tagging their friends in photos. We announced the tool in December 2010, and it was covered widely,” the company said in a statement. “Now that we have begun to roll this out more widely, we are notifying people of its availability, and how it works. Tag Suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested. No action is taken on a person’s behalf, and all suggestions can be ignored. ”
The company said the feature has already led to the addition of “hundreds of millions of tags. This data, and the fact that we’ve had almost no user complaints, suggests people are enjoying the feature and are finding it useful.”
Even though Facebook has defended its new tool and says opting out is simple, critics suggest that it shouldn’t be on users to back out, but their choice to opt in.
One of the biggest risks is how the extraordinary amount of information “on Facebook can be used for unintended and unimagined purposes,” said Kurt Roemer, chief security strategist at Citrix Systems. “Data, such as profile information, friends, preferences and relationships are collected, correlated and interpolated. The result is an erosion of privacy and the very real possibility that you are labeled.”
What if, Roemer asked, you went to a restaurant and a security camera spotted you and then checked you in? Cool? Or scary?
“Imagine someone taking your picture on the street. If they’re a ‘friend of a friend’ — and connected to a Facebooker who leaves their profile rather open — that random stranger who was interested in you can easily find out who you are, who you hang out with, where you go, and what your routine is — basically anything shared online,” he said. “Find someone walking down the street and instantly know everything about them? It’s creepy.”
The privacy issues will only compound, Roemer said, once police and lawyers start to try to access the information to search for certain people by their descriptions.
“The possibilities for using this information are boundless,” he said.
Privacy advocates also raise the alarm over control, or more specifically, your lack of it — particularly if you’re not a Facebook user.
You can set Facebook’s controls to stop tagging photos of you, but you can’t click a button to take back what has already been done or stop Facebook from compiling it all on its own. Facebook in its FAQ does include a provision that allows consumers to email the company to remove “photo summary information” about themselves.
Critics say Facebook has stacked the deck against consumers, taking away too much control and allowing the company to all these identified and cataloged images to its already staggering collection of personal information.
EPIC said the photo practices is a deceptive trade practice and has asked the FTC to suspend Facebook’s collection of the data and launch a full investigation into the practice. “Users could not reasonably have known that Facebook would use their photos to build a biometric database in order to implement a facial recognition technology under the control of Facebook,” EPIC said in its complaint.
A spokesman for the FTC said the agency received the complaint, but would have no further comment.
If you’re feeling a little uncomfortable with the whole idea, you can, at a minimum, disable the tagging function so Facebook’s robots aren’t running around tagging your name on photos they spot. Here’s how to do it:
- Go to “Account” on the upper right side of Facebook and choose “Privacy Settings” from the drop-down menu.
- Choose “Customize Settings.”
- Then pick “Suggest photos of me to friends.”
- Click “Edit Settings” and choose “Disabled” and click “Okay.”
While you’re in your privacy settings, have a look, for the sake of your privacy. You’ll see just how freely your information can flow. Can everyone see it or just your friends? Can others “check you in” to places and show where you are? This is where you’ll find all that info and where you can dial it back if you care to.
Just remember that today a quick search of a person’s name can deliver a lot information, including a photo of you at that party last Saturday doing something you might not remember. And, by the way, the company you’d like to work for is looking at it right now.
Make sure you know what your privacy settings are so that sort of scenario doesn’t crop up and bite you as it has so many others who haven’t realized how many people could see their personal information.
By Reuters
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