Facebook Inc. will be probed by European Union data-protection regulators over a feature that uses face-recognition software to suggest people’s names to tag in pictures without their permission.
A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the EU’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rule violations, said Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. Authorities in the U.K. and Ireland said they are also looking into the photo-tagging function on the world’s most popular social-networking service.
Says Gerard Lommel,
“Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default. Such automatic tagging suggestions can bear a lot of risks for users and the European data-protection officials will clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”
Facebook said yesterday on its blog that “Tag Suggestions” are available in most countries after being phased in over several months. When a Facebook user adds a photo to their page, the feature uses facial-recognition software to suggest names of people in the photo to tag based on pictures in which they have already been identified. Before the feature was rolled out, users could tag pictures manually without permission from their Facebook friends.
Default Setting
The feature is active by default on existing users’ accounts and Palo Alto, California-based Facebook explains on its blog how people can disable the function, if they don’t want their names to be automatically suggested for other people’s pictures.
Facebook said in an emailed statement,
“We launched Tag Suggestions to help people add tags of their friends in photos; something that’s currently done more than 100 million times a day. Tag suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested.”
Facebook is among U.S. companies that have faced scrutiny in the EU for possible privacy breaches. Google Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Yahoo! Inc. have been pushed by European data- protection officials to limit the amount of time they store online users’ search records. The group has also criticized Facebook for policy changes that could harm users’ privacy.
The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office is “speaking to Facebook” about the privacy aspects of the technology, said Greg Jones, a spokesman for the group.
Says Greg Jones,
“We would expect Facebook to be upfront about how people’s personal information is being used. The privacy issues that this new software might raise are obvious.”
The Irish data-protection authority is also looking into the issue, said spokeswoman Ciara O’Sullivan.
The Article 29 group guides the work of national data- protection agencies, which have the power to punish companies that break privacy rules.
COMMENTARY: I don't know of many internet startups that have violated privacy issues as much as the $82.5 billion valued social network giant Facebook. It seems Zuck is good for at least one apology over privacy violations about every six months or so. He says we need this in order to truly create a great social networking experience and connect the globe.
Google and Twitter were both slapped really hard by the FTC for internet privacy violations. Both are now on 20-year probation (Ouch), which means if they screwup just one more time, they could be subject to fines of $50 for every single violation. Let's do some math. Facebook has 600 million users x $50 per = $30 billion. That's one huge fine.
The EU will probably just slap Zuck and company without a fine, but you don't mess with those Europeans. Trust me. Google already paid $2 billion for unfair advertising practices. I think Microsoft paid $4 billion for anti-trust violations. They are tough over there.
I understand Congress is trying to enact legislation to make default settings in internet profiles non-automatic. This coiuld mean that all internet sites, not just social networks, may have to notify users about their default profile settings
Courtesy of an article dated June 8, 2011 appearing in Bloomberg Businessweek
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