The
feature uses facial-recognition software, and when a user posts a new photo to
their Facebook page, the feature suggests peoples’ names to be tagged based on
pictures they have been tagged in before.Facebook
Inc. will be probed by European Union data-protection regulators
over a feature
that uses face-recognition software to suggest people’s names to tag in
pictures without their permission.
A group of privacy watchdogs drawn
from the EU’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rule violations,
said Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data
Protection Working Party. Authorities in the U.K. and Ireland said they are
also looking into the photo-tagging function on the world’s most popular
social
networking service.
“Tags of people on pictures should
only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by
default,” said Lommel. Such automatic tagging suggestions “can bear a lot of
risks for users” and the European data-protection officials will “clarify to
Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”
Facebook said yesterday on its blog that “Tag Suggestions” are available in
most countries after being phased in over several months. When a Facebook user
adds a photo to their page, the feature uses facial-recognition software to
suggest names of people in the photo to tag based on pictures in which they
have already been identified. Before the feature was rolled out, users could
tag pictures manually without permission from their Facebook friends.
Default Setting
The feature is active by default on
existing users’ accounts and Palo Alto, California-based Facebook explains on its blog
how people can disable the function, if they don’t want their names to be
automatically suggested for other people’s pictures.
“We launched Tag Suggestions to help
people add tags of their friends in photos; something that’s currently done
more than 100 million times a day,” Facebook said in an e-mailed statement.
“Tag suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site,
and only friends are suggested.”
Facebook is among U.S. companies
that have faced scrutiny in the EU for possible privacy breaches. Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. have been
pushed by European data- protection officials to limit the amount of time they
store online users’ search records. The group has also criticized Facebook for
policy changes that could harm users’ privacy.
The U.K.’s Information
Commissioner’s Office is “speaking to Facebook” about the privacy aspects of
the technology, said Greg Jones, a spokesman for the group.
“We would expect Facebook to be
upfront about how people’s personal information is being used,” Jones said.
“The privacy issues that this new software might raise are obvious.”
The Irish data-protection authority
is also looking into the issue, said spokeswoman Ciara O’Sullivan.
The Article 29 group guides the work
of national data- protection agencies, which have the power to punish companies
that break privacy rules.
No comments:
Post a Comment