Facebook has apologized for its new launch of software that automatically recognizes users’ faces without informing them. Facebook, the social networking giant said that it was their mistake and they should not have done so. It admitted that t should have done more to notify members about the global launch of the system. This new feature scans the photos that are uploaded and match faces with the old one already on the site of the users. Then it suggests the name of friends to assign, or “tag”, to the photo.
Users can have option either to switch it or off many complained that they were not explicitly asked if they wanted it activated. The company said that this feature was launched to speed up the tagging process. For the first time it was launched in the US in December 2010 and after a year it has been launched globally.
n a statement, the company headed by Mark Zuckerberg said it “should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them.” Facebook quoted that it has been contacted by regulators and was responding to their inquiries to “satisfy any concerns they will have”. Facebook also added this feature will work on only the new uploaded photos. The feature can be made disable by turning off the “suggest photos of me to friends” option on their privacy settings.
Senior consultant at security firm Sophos, Graham Cluley said that users’ annoyance was less about the product’s purpose than the manner in which it was made live. In a blog post he wrote that We simply had to wait until Facebook decided to roll it out to our account. Now might be a good time to check your Facebook privacy settings.” He also added that only friends can do the actual tagging but Facebook appeared to be pushing friends to tag each other.
