Facebook Facial Recognition Raises New Privacy Concerns

c0lo writes "Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as many Facebook users are reporting that the site has enabled the face recognition in the last few days without giving users any notice. Once again, Facebook seems to be sharing personal information by default, instead on users having to 'opt-in'. Some other comments and an interesting reaction from Google and how to get around/disable it."

Comments

How This Happens:

[causality]

Facebook Admin 1: It's like they'll just keep coming back, keep using our services, no matter what we do to them.

Facebook Admin 2: Strange. Might as well take advantage of it while it lasts. Let's share more of their data by default then.

Re:How This Happens:

[SirAstral]

This is proof that you either do not work in IT or you are at the bottom of the totem pole. Admins don't make very many decisions. Admins find problems and fix them after they have approval from their managers. I have yet worked for a company that has let their Admins make a decision anywhere that big on their own.

This was an IN YOUR FACE managerial action!

On a side note, it also proves why people are stupid and perfectly explains why everyone keeps electing liars into office. After a couple hundred years of recorded modern history nothing new is under the sun. Politicians can flat out tell their followers that they are not taking bribes with $100 bills falling out of their stuffed pockets and the followers believe.

Yeehaw!!!!

Re:How This Happens:

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

You don't know how right you are.
Check out these IM's from Zuckerberg himself:

Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard

Zuck: Just ask.

Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS

[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?

Zuck: People just submitted it.

Zuck: I don't know why.

Zuck: They "trust me"

Zuck: Dumb fucks.

Re:How This Happens:

[the_hellspawn]

Mark Z: I'm gay and would one of you awesome admins shove a pineapple up my ass...please!

And the downside is?

[paro12]

I get that once again Facebook has opted people into a new feature, but I'm not sure I get what all the anger is about. As far as I can tell, all this does is allow people who you have already accepted as friends to make it easier to tag their photos... Please somebody explain the downside to me. Its not like the same people couldn't have tagged you anyway, they just would have had to do it manually. I know I for one am excited by this since it makes the process of uploading pictures that much quicker.

Re:And the downside is?

[QuasiSteve]

But facebook can already do that - this isn't related to what facebook may or may not be doing behind the scenes.

Any third party with facial recognition software can also do this, but they'll need access to the people's profiles first.

And that's where a major change may be. Say you 'friend' a certain festival organizer because hey, if you friend them, you can keep updated on developments, or you get a discount, or whatever.
So you go to that festival, you have a good time, you also - unfortunately - get shitfaced.
The festival organizer takes pictures during the event, and posts them online.
Suddenly, you're not just some random guy in a festival picture that, albeit not impossible to find, requires a certain level of effort. No, now you're a tagged guy, and one needs but click through to get to your profile.

Now, yes.. you -chose- to friend the festival organizers., and by going to the festival you, implicitly or explicitly, agreed to photos of the festival to be used in publication, and so forth and so on.
The question is, did you knowingly and willingly also allow them to - automatically or otherwise - tag you in those photos?
The "knowingly" would certainly need scrutinizing, as the article seems to imply that facebook enabled by default and didn't particular let you know (I'm sure it can be found somewhere and you're supposed to check that every 10 minutes for whatever consent-who-needs-consent change they implemented this time) - and with it, the "willingly" part.

Re:And the downside is?

[gstoddart]

I get that once again Facebook has opted people into a new feature, but I'm not sure I get what all the anger is about.

So, let me give you a thought experiment.

Say I don't have a Facebook account now (which I don't). But, say, Facebook has turned on facial recognition for all of the existing users (which they have).

So, this weekend if I go downtown to where all of the bars and nightlife are, and I start snapping pictures of people doing various things. Quietly, and unobtrusively mind you.

Now, say I create a facebook account with false profile information, solely so I can upload pictures of people I don't know doing various (and possibly stupid) things. You're no longer some random, mostly anonymous guy in a picture which could have been anywhere ... you're Bob from Detroit. And that guy with the crack pipe is your friend Dave and he's got an outstanding warrant.

By Facebook opting you in to having facial recognition done on you ... how many random people I have never met would be covered by them doing facial recognition on my pictures and associating them with you?

They opted you into something which potentially has fairly broad privacy implications. And, since they have it, the governments might subpoena them for the underlying data so they can feed it into their own system that keep track of citizens (and, they'll make sure Facebook doesn't tell anyone).

Is my example somewhat contrived and a little extreme? Absolutely. Do I think it's a plausible scenario? Sadly, yes.

The point is, they enable a lot of information gathering about people that can happen without any knowledge or consent. Which is what Facebook does every time they add a new feature. And, which is why I won't use Facebook.

Re:And the downside is?

[paro12]

So, this weekend if I go downtown to where all of the bars and nightlife are, and I start snapping pictures of people doing various things. Quietly, and unobtrusively mind you.

Now, say I create a facebook account with false profile information, solely so I can upload pictures of people I don't know doing various (and possibly stupid) things. You're no longer some random, mostly anonymous guy in a picture which could have been anywhere ... you're Bob from Detroit. And that guy with the crack pipe is your friend Dave and he's got an outstanding warrant.

If this is the case, then yes I have a huge problem with it. But thats not the way facebook works (yet)...By my reading, it will work as with most other aspects of Facebook. If you have set it up so only friends can view your profile information, pictures, etc. then in only those peoples uploads will you be autotagged. If you allow friends of friends, or groups you belong to to see your information then those peoples uploads will contain your data, etc.

Re:And the downside is?

[gstoddart]

If this is the case, then yes I have a huge problem with it. But thats not the way facebook works (yet)

Well, given all of the news coverage from Facebook over the last few years ... I simply don't trust them to not suddenly make this information public in another few months. Not a little. They have a repeated pattern of deciding all of your information should be public ... the solution is to give them nothing.

And, really, it would be naive to think they haven't done it in the background and even if they haven't (yet) decided to show information to un-linked persons ... when the DHS shows up to them with a subpoena and a picture of someone and says "give us everything you have on this and if you tell anybody you go to jail".

Even the governments who claim to be bastions of freedom and democracy (I think we all know who I mean) have been shady about this kind of stuff. So, you'll forgive me if I have no trust whatsoever for Facebook in this regard.

Hell, didn't Google just decide not to roll out facial recognition because it opened up too many privacy issues?

Regardless of what it looks like to a given user, there's likely far more information sitting on Facebook's servers than they'll admit to. I think someone should start stalking Zuckerburg and his family and friends to be sure as much of their private information is made public .. that's more or less what they're doing to everyone else.

Re:Facebook account for IT pros?

[gstoddart]

I don't personally have an FB account ... but I do personally know literally dozens of professionals in the IT/consulting industry with FB accounts.

I fear we may be increasingly in the minority for this.

Hell, I know people who use their FB account to ask peers technical questions ... just throw out a general "anybody know this?".

Very Small Inconvenience

[curio_city]

Every time somebody tags a user in a photo, the user is notified and can untag him/herself.

The algorithm uses images that have already been tagged as X person for the reference. Tagging the wall behind you, or your pants, etc., should confuse the inputs enough to prevent good matches. This affects facebook's ability to find and recognize photos of you, which is slightly separate from other users' ability to find photos of you, since facial recognition indexing will occur even if you untag yourself or "opt out".

Re:Very Small Inconvenience

[wjousts]

Every time somebody tags a user in a photo, the user is notified and can untag him/herself.

And if somebody tags a photo of you and you are not a user (IIRC, a Facebook user can tag any picture with your name, even if you are not a Facebook user yourself)? How does Facebook notify you? How can you untag it?

Answer: you can't.

Next question, if Facebook is using facial recognition, does it work on non-users? If somebody tags a photo with the name of a non-user, will it look for other photos of that non-user and try and automatically tag them?

The scary part is that Facebook has a profile for you, even if you have never visited Facebook. Notice all those "Like" buttons on your favorite websites - unless you are never accept cookies, Facebook already has a profile built up for you just in case you decide to join sometime in the future. How nice of them!

Re:Made a facebook account last night

[betterunixthanunix]

Why do you need Facebook to keep up with your friends? You could try actually spending time with them, talking to them, etc.

Re:Facebook's new motto...

[Combatso]

when did they ask forgivness?

Facebook Privacy Concept is Flawed...

[I)_MaLaClYpSe_(I]

...since it depends on the commons sense of all your friends. What could possibly go wrong?

I permanently deleted my facebook account a few weeks ago: a worm was spreading very fast through facebook and for over a week I could not notify facebook about the issue.

The worm spread via event invitations containing a link to a site that social engineered the people into copying Java script code into their browser so that it would steal their account credentials and propagate further. And facebook does not provide you with any means of contacting anybody at all, let alone from the security team! Instead, you are dependent on those buttons that let you report inappropriate messages or such. Only those event invitations did not have such buttons. I wasted dozens of hours trying to notify them about the scheme but finally gave up and deleted my account.

I learnt one thing: the privacy concept of facebook is fundamentally flawed as your own private data that you share with friends and family is dependent on the common sense of these friends. It needs only one of them to be stupid enough to follow complex procedures of copying JavaScript code because they think they could find out who viewed their profile or such to completely compromise your privacy.

I for one am outta there. And if you look closely enough, you find a hell of a lot worms and security vulnerabilities in facebook.