Facing Facts: Facebook's Facial Recognition

Analysis: Facebook never forgets a face, until you tell it to. But the real problem isn't facial recognition, it's your total lack of control over how you can be tagged.

By Dan Tynan, ITworld Jun 12, 2011 11:21 am

Newsflash: Facebook knows your face. And if you're not careful, it might identify your face to other people who also know your face, as well as to their friends (who might not).

This seems to have some people in a tizzy. Last December, Facebook announced it was implementing facial recognition technology that will scan images as they're uploaded, find similar images others have uploaded, and suggest name tags based on other tags it found during its scan.

facebook photo tag suggestions

So if you've been tagged in dozens of photos on Facebook and a friend of yours uploads one more, Facebook will (theoretically at least) suggest that friend identify you in that picture.

Though it announced that feature last December, it wasn't widely available until recently. Now that it is, people are upset - primarily because, in classic Facebook fashion, they turned this feature on by default instead of asking users' permission first. The European Union, for example, is looking into whether this breaks one of its 3,297* privacy laws.

Facebook, Facebook, Facebook: Will you ever learn?

I might be upset too, if I could ever get the damned thing to work. I uploaded a half dozen mugshots of my own to Facebook from two of my dummy accounts. Facebook suggested nothing about who I was. There's probably some minimum threshold for tags that I don't meet. Or maybe they just don't like me.

[ See also: Weinergate: Five lessons in stupidity . ]

Of course, your friends don't have to take Facebook's suggestion and tag you. If they do, Facebook sends you an alert so you can remove the tag. You can also remove your face from consideration by adjusting your privacy settings thusly:

facebook photo tag privacy controls

Go to Account*Privacy Settings.
Click "Customize settings."
Scroll down to "Suggest photos of me to friends" and click the Edit Settings button.
Click the box where it says "Enabled" and select "Disabled."
Click "Okay" and return to your previously scheduled activities, already in progress.

There are two real problems here, and neither one of them is the facial recognition bit that's made everyone go all Minority Report over this.

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http://www.pcworld.com/article/230107/facing_facts_facebooks_facial_recognition.html

Anyone Remember Polar Rose? It was a Facial Reconception Web Site that you could Tag your Self and others on from any Picture on the Internet! I had some fun with it, till it went away!:( Like any Powerful Tool (IE, Hammer, Screw Driver, Chain Saw, Software...) It could have been used for Evil too:( I believe the Application Went Commercial...

Polar Rose is a company from Malmö, Sweden which makes facial recognition software.

Polar Rose had a service that allows users to name people in their photos on photo sharing sites like Flickr and 23hq.com using their Facebook contacts. Using their facial recognition Polar Rose applies a good amount of auto-tagging for users.The service was discontinued on 6 September, 2010 ^[1] only to be purchased two weeks later by Apple Inc. for approximately $22 million. ^[2]