Facebook Photo Tag Suggest Breaches Privacy

Last week, social network Facebook had announced using in-house developed Face Recognition technology for automatically Tagging photos of users. Though the feature sounded quite helpful, it does raise privacy concerns as pointed out by Graham Cluley, Senior Technology Consultant at Sophos.

Cluley stated that while this feature may appeal to those Facebook users who are keen on sharing every detail of their social life with their online friends, it is alarming to those who wish to have a little more anonymity.

According to Cluley, Facebook's Face Recognition has been programmed to match faces in the photos of the users. Tags won't be added automatically but suggestions would be offered. All users would be identified by default, unless they personally opt out from getting photos being suggested to friends. So even if you don't want to be tagged in photos that you want to keep private, you' ll get tagged with this new Face Recognition software. 

He noted that, rather than allowing users to opt out of this feature, Facebook users should be given the option to opt-in. A recent Sophos poll showed that 90 percent of Facebook users think that all Facebook features should become totally opt in. With this new feature, I'd say that this percentage is likely to rise.

Facebook hasn't rolled out Tag Suggestions, but if you don't wish your photos to be automatically visible to all as suggestions, make the following changes to ensure that. Go to Privacy Settings of your Facebook account, and click on Customize Settings link. When the option, suggest photos of me is available, you need to deactivate it. By default it would be activated, so you'll have to wait for Facebook to make Photo Tag suggestions features available first. 

Once again I fail to understand why does Facebook always enables any setting as ON and shares user information with rest of the world. Most of the times the user is not even aware that his/her information is being shared with all and leeched by many. 

Cluley also pointed out that Phoney First Facebook Status message carries a link that leads to rogue application. We wonder how did the rogue application get through Facebook platform security.