Facebook's Newest Privacy Problem: 'Faceprint' Data (cnet.com)

Katie Collins, reporting for CNET: Facebook knows you so well these days that it can recognize you just by seeing your face. You may not have a problem with this, but that doesn't mean it's all good in the eyes of the law. The social network lost the first round of a lawsuit on Thursday in which it is accused of "unlawfully" storing biometric data mined from people's photographs. The company was seeking to have the suit dismissed, but a federal judge in California rejected the request. Facebook taps into its photo-tagging system to build up a geometric representation of people's faces to create something called a faceprint for each of its users. Faceprints are then used to suggest tags for people when new photos are uploaded to the network. One could argue that the clue is in the name, but many Facebook users probably don't know that they agree to having data about their face stored when they sign up.

Comments

Re:One could argue that the clue is in the name...

[i.r.id10t]

IIRC when it recognizes a face (or a face like shape) it offers users to tag that person, and I think the tag has to be of an existing facebook user, possibly in your friends or friends-of-friends...

But my immediate thought is "what would it take to poison the data". IE, if you can tag your friends, and you have a large enough group of 'em, could you repeatedly tag similar photos (of say, yourself) with different names enough to "muddy the print" ?

Re:Stop. Using. Facebook.

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

I don't use Facebook. That doesn't stop my friends from tagging my face when I'm in one of their photos which they post on Facebook.

I solved this problem by telling my friends that if they ever "tag" me in a photo on Facebook, I'd come over to their house and beat their brains out with a baseball bat.

They didn't believe me at first, but after 2 or 3 funerals, word got around.