Facebook Quietly Switches On Facial Recognition Tech By Default
June 8th, 2011Via: Register:
Facebook has rolled out its facial recognition technology to countries outside of the US, but has switched the feature on by default without telling its users first.
UK-based security expert Graham Cluely noted earlier today that Facebook had slotted the tech into the social network.
The Mark Zuckerberg-run company started using its facial recognition software in December last year for its Stateside users in a move to automatically provide tags for the photos uploaded by Facebook users.
The tech works by scanning newly uploaded pics and then identifies faces from previously tagged photos already stored in Zuckerberg’s internet silo.
When the software was introduced in the US late last year, Facebook pointed out that users could disable the function.
“If for any reason you don’t want your name to be suggested, you will be able to disable suggested tags in your Privacy Settings,” the company wrote on its blog post last December.
But now that the tech has reached other shores, Facebook clearly didn’t feel the need to alert its international stalkerbase that its facial recognition software had been switched on by default within the social network.
Research Credit: eo
a friend told me about this the other day. another cryptogon moment…