The Korea Herald

소아쌤

Facebook under fire for photo tagging feature

By 조정은

Published : June 9, 2011 - 13:20

    • Link copied

   

WASHINGTON, June 8, 2011 (AFP) - Facebook is coming under fire for a feature that uses facial recognition software to allow members to tag pictures of their friends on the social network.

The "Tag Suggestions" feature made its debut on Facebook in the United States six months ago but has drawn renewed attention this week after the social network began rolling it out to other countries.

Justin Mitchell, a Facebook engineer, said in a blog post that Tag Suggestions was now available in most countries.

Tag Suggestions uses facial recognition software to match newly uploaded photos to photos that have been tagged elsewhere and suggests the name of the friend in the photo for tagging.

Although the feature was launched in the United States in December, it began coming under scrutiny again this week following a blog post by Graham Cluley of the security firm Sophos.

Cluley objected to the enabling of the photo tagging feature without giving users any notice and the fact that it is an opt-in instead of an opt-out process, meaning users were included unless they specifically changed their settings.

"The tagging is still done by your friends, not by Facebook, but rather creepily Facebook is now pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you," Cluley said.

"Facebook does not give you any right to pre-approve tags," he said.

"Instead the onus is on you to untag yourself in any photo a friend has tagged you in. After the fact."

"Many people feel distinctly uncomfortable about a site like Facebook learning what they look like, and using that information without their permission," he continued.

"The onus should not be on Facebook users having to 'opt-out' of the facial recognition feature, but instead on users having to 'opt-in,' Cluley said.

A member of the US House of Representatives objected on Wednesday to the opt-in nature of the photo tagging feature on Facebook, which has been forced to weather a number of privacy storms over the past few years.

"Requiring users to disable this feature after they've already been included by Facebook is no substitute for an opt-in process," said Representative Edward Markey, a Democrat from Massachusetts.

"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," Markey said in a statement.

Facebook, which has more than 600 million members, said Wednesday that the feature was intended to make it easier to tag friends in photos but apologized for not sharing more information.

"We launched Tag Suggestions to help people add tags of their friends in photos; something that's currently done more than 100 million times a day," a Facebook spokesman said in a statement to AFP.

"If for any reason someone doesn't want their name to be suggested, they can disable the feature in their Privacy Settings," the spokesman said.

"When we announced this feature last December, we explained that we would test it, listen to feedback and iterate before rolling it out more broadly," he said.

"We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them," the spokesman said.

 

<한글요약>

얼굴인식 가능한 페이스북, 비난봇물

페이스북이 얼굴인식 프로그램 때문에 비난 받기 시작했다. 

얼굴인식 프로그램으로 사생활 침해가 염려되기 때문이다.

기존 사진들을 토대로 새 사진속의 친구들을 찾을수 있기때문에 페이스북 사용자들은 더 이상 친구들의 이름을 수동으로 태그할 필요가 없어졌다.        

보안 업체에서 종사하는 크루리는 페이스북이 점점 우리들의 사생활을 침해하고 있다고 전했다. 그는 이어 페이스북이 이용자들의 얼굴을 인식할 수 있다는 것에 대해 사람들이 매우 불쾌해하고 있다고 했다.

페이스북 대변인은 하루에도 수없이 태그가 이뤄지고 있는 가운데 이용자들이 더 편리하게 사진 태그를 할 수 있도록 얼굴인식을 시작했다고 전했다.

대변인은 또 본 서비스를 받고 싶지 않은 이용자들은 개인 정보 설정에서 정지할 수 있다고 말했다.