Tuesday 14 June 2011

Facebook enables facial recognition without telling users


Do you worry that Facebook knows too much about you? The popular social network site is about to learn a lot more.

The Internet is buzzing with feedback about one of Facebook's latest features to go global - facial recognition.

Here's how it works. Facebook scans through a user's pictures using facial recognition technology to identify the user's friends. The site then suggests that the user tag those friends.

While facial recognition makes tagging pictures easier, it's raising serious concerns about how Facebook introduces new features.

According to The New York Times, "Facebook has come under repeated criticism in the past few years for automatically opting users into new product releases without their knowledge or consent."

Facebook's founder Mark Zuckerberg told The Times that he supports this practice because it allows users to fully experience the most up-to-date version of the site.

The problem: Many users don't know what new features have been released and are unsure of how to navigate the site's privacy settings to disable the changes.

To turn off the facial recognition option, users must go to their privacy settings and click on "Customize Settings." Under the "Things Others Share" list will be the "Suggest photos of me to friends" feature. Users then have the option to enable or disable facial recognition.

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