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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."
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.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
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.
This could also be a Slashdot poll: How many IT pros (Web designers do not count, sorry) do you know who have a FB account? ...
Personally, I do not know any
I broke down, gave up, and made a facebook account last night. Apparently that's what I have to do if I want to keep up with my friends, rather than just sit home, alone but for Warcraft and Netflix.
Their security options were extensive and relatively easy to navigate. It did seem that they were asking the same questions over and over, where they could have just asked me once about some things and been done with it. I could see that someone not so good at diligently following each and every link on the page could accidentally leave some setting at default.
Overall it seemed fine, as long as I keep apps turned off. That I can live with.
It doesn't hurt to be nice.
I never thought I'd see the day goatse might actually be a positive contribution to a discussion...
My facebooktard family is always posting and tagging pics of me at family gatherings, I knew facial recognition to auto-tag people in pics was the next step...maybe next they'll make "info pages" for nonexistant users, that will practially be an "unmanned" facebook profile filled with 3rd-party information, that you can sign up to claim at any time...great...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
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".
It's easier to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
holy jumpin jesus! they shold have called it FACEbook... oh wait
It seems the government can save money by eliminating Witness Protection now that global facial recognition is available via Facebook. It's only a matter of time before someone figures out a way to scan all users, not just friends or people that opt in.
www.moonnext.com
...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.
Astonishing Tribe had Recognizer, there was Face Match, think back to Operation Nobel Shield. Add in the Local Feature Analysis (LFA) vs the hinted at speed of nodal point databases and the known US populations size - public and private facial recognition is getting interesting, cheap and very fast. ... could be on a list. A one person list, a private firm or government - once they have you connected with a pic you uploaded?
Your face and someone who is a friend of a friend
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
All the three-letter-agencies that have access to the database almost certainly have been running facial recognition on it for years. Making it visible to users doesn't make it much worse, if anything it's good. Maybe people will start thinking about the consequences of uploading photos of themselves, their friends, their families, their homes etc.
Or maybe not.