Facebook Can Hunt Down Your Face in Any Photo Now

[The Straight Story]

Facebook Can Hunt Down Your Face in Any Photo Now

Facebook knows what you look like, and the implications are staggering. Drawing on billions of labeled photos, the social network will now automatically recognize faces and suggest people to tag in photos you upload. That's probably just the start.

Under the new feature, Facebook will compare faces in photos uploaded by users to "tagged" pictures in its existing database. If it gets any matches it will suggest names to attach to the new photos. A company executive tells CNET the new feature is actually a privacy enhancement, since getting tagged will alert you to "a photo of you on the Internet that you didn't know about... you can remove the tag, or you... can write the person and say, 'I'm not that psyched about this photo.'"

Right, sure. Of course, you probably won't be so psyched about this feature once it is used by, say, law enforcement to tie you to a picture of purported wrongdoing, as CNBC's John Carney imagines. Not that this is the only possible use for this technology, Those young engineers at Facebook are whip smart; give them a little time to think and they'll probably come up with something way creepier than automated global photo lineups.

http://gawker.com/5713994/facebook-can-hunt-down-your-face-in-any-photo-now

[SpiralHawk]

1. "All your face are belong to us." - Facebook, Inc.

[dipsydoodle]

2. Does that mean

that if I change my profile picture to a cabbage they'll label me as Sarah Palin ? :shrug:

[The Straight Story]

3. No but if you change your name to quitter they will use her photo on your page

:rofl:

[dipsydoodle]

4. Nice one !

:rofl:

[Raschel]

21. I'm not on facebook, but my doggie's pic has been uploaded. Should we worry?

[HEyHEY]

5. What a great way for stalkers to find out your info, just snap a pic and upload it!

[Moosepoop]

7. True, but...

Facebook says that there will be the choice to opt-out of the app, and not have your name show up to other people as a tagging suggestion. So at least there will be the choice of whether to participate or not.

[eShirl]

10. It should be an opt-in option, not opt-out.

[Cal Carpenter]

17. That's one of the reasons I've resisted joining

It seems like most of the features, no matter how invasive, default to 'On' and if you aren't aware of the 300 different features, and new ones that they come up with, you're kinda exposed.

I'd feel more comfortable if it defaulted to highest privacy levels.

I do realize I could work around all this stuff but it just turns me off.

[TBF]

6. On the Time website I voted for Julian as man of the year, but I completely

understood why they chose Zuckerman. Facebook really has changed how we communicate, and along with that we will have these issues come up. Of course if they go by my tagging they are going to be horribly confused because I tag my children's pictures with my husband's name to post them on his page - and the same with my friend's kids. All my friends do it as well. When Facebook prompts me to tag something (they will do this as you describe above - to identify) I always say no and move on.

There are a lot of settings you need to look at in "account" to figure out how much sharing you want to do. The default is to share everything, and if there is one thing I'd change about Facebook it would be to change that default (I'd also pay a yearly fee to get rid of that - because it's less attractive to the advertisers).

[LWolf]

8. Facebook doesn't have my photo. I didn't upload it. nt

[GoCubsGo]

9. You also need to ask your friends not to upload your photo.

If they "tag" you in one of their uploaded photos, Facebook has your photo.

[LWolf]

13. True. Only one "friend" has any photos of me,

and he knows better than to upload a photo that includes me. My son. I'm really only on facebook because of that son, who lives 1200 miles away. We don't get to see each other often enough, so fb is an easy way to keep up with our lives. Most of the rest of my small group of friends are also in other states.

[Pacifist Patriot]

11. Upload a bunch of different celebrity photos and then tag them all as you.

[pipi_k]

18. Hahahahahah!!!! That's a great idea!

Off to tag photos of Marilyn Monroe, Margaret Thatcher, Danny DeVito, Ringo Starr, Mr Hankey the Christmas Poo, and Francis the talking mule with my name...


:7

[renate]

23. that's a wonderful idea

I am so sick of Facebook's making us opt out instead of opt in. :puke:

[City Lights]

12. Self delete...nevermind. nt

[malaise]

14. I have a question

Why would anyone join Facebook and then expect privacy

[sammytko]

20. Thank YOU!!

The only people that see your photos are the ones you "friend", unless you allow friends of friends or all.

I believe that feature is already available on Google anyway.

[The Velveteen Ocelot]

15. My Facebook photo is a cat.

Good luck tagging my kitty.

[uncle ray]

22. you might be shock to find out how many pics of your puss are on the interwebs.

[HughBeaumont]

16. Good luck with that. My profile photo is Biggus Dickus.

[FLPanhandle]

19. I wonder how many "twins" I have out there.

Could be interesting to see what names pop up on photos of me.

[Broken_Hero]

24. Good thing I use

fake pictures of myself....