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Facebook, facial recognition & ‘opt out’ privacy settings: clever, creepy or both?

Avatar Image7th June 2011, 05:26 pm  by Jo Stratmann

Image courtesy of X journals

Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings as it appears that Facebook has rolled out its new auto facial recognition feature without giving users any notice.

So what happens with this new facial recognition technology?

Basically every time your friends upload images, Facebook will try to determine if any of the pictures look like 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.

So the tagging is still done by your friends and not by Facebook; the element that some deem to be creepy though is that Facebook is now actually pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you.

What’s more, Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags so it’s up to you as a user to untag yourself if you are tagged by a friend.  And that’s often after you’ve been tagged.

If the new facial recognition technology is something you’re uncomfortable with you “opt out” by disabling the  “Suggest photos of me to friends” option, which can be found by going to Facebook account’s privacy settings and then “Customize settings”.

So what do you think about Facebook’s facial recognition privacy settings? Creepy or clever? Or both?

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    • 4 Comments

    1. Ennid:

      I think that this new Facebook facial recognition feature is very creepy and I feel very uncomfortable with it. Not to mention that it’s a pain in the butt. I will definitely opt. out and I will strongly advise all of my fb friends and family members to do the same.

      7 June 2011, 9:05 pm

    2. Haitham:

      The creepiness is unfounded I think. Nothing wrong with a software attempting to recognise images, especially that the result is only a suggestion to the uploader to tag.. all it’s doing is making the job easier.

      If you had a picture taken of you by a friend, what’s wrong with your name labelled under it?

      8 June 2011, 10:37 am

    3. Sol Ascendans - The Website of Alex Sumner:

      Facebook Facial Recognition & Marketing…

      Yes I do really look like this in real-life! Facebook is apparently introducing a new Facial Recognition feature which is going to suggest tags for your photos, based on their similarity to other photos already on the site. Now whilst a lot of civil li…

      8 June 2011, 3:11 pm

    4. sakshi:

      Oops! Facebook Does it AGAIN! Raises Privacy Concerns With Facial Recognition Auto-Tagging Feature: http://www.faadooengineers.com/content/280-facebook-invades-users-privacy-again

      12 June 2011, 4:17 am