I did not think it was a good idea in the first place and I know very well what my friends and family look like and do not need help to recognize them. Maybe if people limited their “Friends” to actual friends they would not need tagging at all. I doubt a program that can spot you in a crowd of friends on a photo you're already sharing out is actually any worse. Hell just signing up to post this comment, you've willingly given away your email address and / or your Twitter / WordPress account names. Its an application that looks at your photos and does a compare that's all… I'm sure people can dream up all manner of nefarious ways of abusing this technology, but that, in itself, is only relevant if you, as a user, aren't already sharing hundreds of photos of yourself willingly on an open public network! You don't need conspiracy theories of facial recognition programs knocking up false ID's of you or identity theft of any kind, when everyone is willingly throwing their photos up for all to see in the first place. You upload your photos to a system with half a billion users on it, you tag yourself and others on it, you share these photos about on that system to users who's privacy settings and priorities are different from your own and that is all fine and dandy?īut the instant Facebook uses a facial recognition technology, that simply looks at your already published photos then uses them as a basis for further tagging of newly uploaded photos, that is an invasion of privacy!? You should also take some time to read our step-by-step advice on how best to configure your Facebook privacy settings.įollow on Twitter for the latest computer security news.įollow on Instagram for exclusive pics, gifs, vids and LOLs! If you are on Facebook and want to keep yourself informed about the latest news from the world of internet security and privacy you could do a lot worse than join the Sophos Facebook page where we regularly discuss these issues and best practice. Yet again, it feels like Facebook is eroding the online privacy of its users by stealth. 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”. It’s even harder though to keep control when Facebook changes the settings without your knowledge. Most Facebook users still don’t know how to set their privacy options safely, finding the whole system confusing. Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission. Unfortunately, once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default. Amongst other things, we asked for “privacy by default” – meaning that there should be no more sharing of information without users’ express agreement (OPT-IN). * Change it to “Disabled” if you don’t want Facebook to work that way.Įarlier this year, Sophos wrote an open letter to Facebook. * If Facebook has enabled auto-suggestion of photo tags you will find the option says “Enabled”. * Unfortunately at this point you can’t tell whether Facebook has enabled the setting or not, you have to dig deeper. When photos look like me, suggest my name”. ![]() * Under “Things others share” you should see an option titled “Suggest photos of me to friends. * Go to your Facebook account’s privacy settings. If this is something you’re uncomfortable with, disable “Suggest photos of me to friends” now. Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. Remember, Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags. The tagging is still done by your friends, not by Facebook, but rather creepily Facebook is now pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you. And if they find what they believe to be a match, they may well urge one of your Facebook friends to tag it with your name. As your Facebook friends upload their albums, Facebook will try to determine if any of the pictures look like you. ![]() There are billions of photographs on Facebook’s servers. Well, 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. We simply had to wait until Facebook decided to roll it out to our account. Most of the rest of us found the option in our privacy settings was “not yet available”, which meant we could neither enable or disable it. When Facebook revealed last year it was introducing facial recognition technology to help users tag their friends in photographs, they gave the functionality to North American users only.
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