The latest headache for Facebook is apparently its facial-recognition software. One day after a security blog pointed out that the technology is turned on by default for photo tagging, European data protection officials are reportedly looking into the issue.
The EU's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party will study the issue for "possible rules violations," according to Bloomberg. Ireland's data-protection authority is also looking into the issue.
An EU spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but the issue is also getting attention here in the states. Rep. Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massaschusetts, expressed concern about the opt-out nature of the facial-recognition technology.
"Requiring users to disable this feature after they've already been included by Facebook is no substitute for an opt-in process," Markey said in a statement. "If this new feature is as useful as Facebook claims, it should be able to stand on its own, without an automatic sign-up that changes users' privacy settings without their permission."
Back in December, Facebook announced plans for facial-recognition technology intended to make it easier for people to tag photos of friends. Facebook said it would examine newly uploaded photos and compare them to other photos in which you or your friends are tagged in order to make tagging suggestions.
On Tuesday, security firm Sophos expressed concern that facial recognition had been turned on by default. Facebook acknowledged that it should have been more communicative about the service.
"We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them," a Facebook spokesman said in a Tuesday statement.
There are no plans to make it opt-in, however, and Facebook said the tool is simply intended to help users speed up a process that is "done more than 100 million times a day." Tag suggestions are made only when people upload photos and it only suggests friends.
Facebook did not respond to a request for comment about the EU probe.
If you don't want facial recognition turned on, go to your Facebook account's privacy settings, click on "Customize settings," go to "Things others share" and find the option for "Suggest photos of me to friends." To see if it's enabled, click "Edit Settings" and the box should either say "enabled" or "disabled."
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