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Friday 10 June 2011

Facebook facial recognition - Handy time-saver, or invasion of privacy?

Say hello (or goodbye) to Facebook Photo facial recognition | Sync™ Blog
Facebook is going to make it so when you upload your album of photos, you can choose to have FB automatically scan and tag your album photos with the names of your friends who are in them (so you don't have to do this one by one manually).

Some say having FB automatically tag you in friends' albums is an invasion of privacy. But, how can you say that when your friends will often tag you in these photos anyway? And, if you are tagged in a photo by a friend, you are notified on FB. If you don't like being tagged in certain photos, you can always remove the tags.

Whenever I upload photos, I usually tag friends.

Unfounded concern?
In all the information about this new feature, it only speaks of your friends and automatically tagging your friends in your photos. It does not mention that it will automatically tag strangers with their names (if they are on Facebook). Yes, this would be a concern, but it seems that it will only be suggesting tags for people you are FB friends with.

More info on the Facebook Blog
.

How to opt out of the new feature
If you don't want this new feature to automatically tag you in your friends' photos, you can opt out by going to:
Account, Privacy Settings, Customize Settings, and finally to Things others share.
There will be a new section that you can adjust (when this new feature goes through):
Disable > Suggest photos of me to friends.
You can still use the new feature to tag your photos, but others won't be able to use it to automatically tag you (they will have to manually tag you in their photos).







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