Facebook Testing Facial Detection for Tagging in Photos

[TrafficProducer]

Facebook Testing Facial Detection for Tagging in Photos (http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2010/07/02/facebook-testing-facial-recognition-for-tagging-in-photos)

More spying? More Privacy Issues? What do you think?

"People love tagging their friends and family in photos, but we've heard that it can be a tedious process. You now can add tags with just a couple of clicks directly from your home page and other sections of the site, using the same face detection technology that cameras have used for years," explains Facebook's new product manager for Photos, Sam Odio. "We're running a limited test of this technology so you may not see it yet."

[kgun]

Not a single answer to a home page thread. Some of those that read this post may not understand your question. Great that you give us this information.

[inkatechnology]

I like the technology itself, but I would still prefer to be able to leave myself untagged in certain photos that do contain me. (I realize I can’t hide everything if I want a public presence, but I can at least control how easy it is to find me.)

[DaveShield]

There are two sides to this... This could be a positive. Nowadays, one bad picture and you could really get into trouble. Even colleges and universities are looking through various social networking sites for more info about applicants. If there is a picture of you doing naked keg stands or something, it is quite likely to hurt your reputation. So, being able to match people with tagged photos is a good thing...in a vacuum. Now the other side...It seems the feds are h&%l bent on getting into the Internet regulation game. As soon as the feds can peer into the activities at FB or any other social site, well...Houston, we have a problem.

Ultimately, I think it would be better to leave monitoring and alerting to 3rd parties and then caveat emptor. There are plenty of services and software that will scour the web for mentions and tags of you and then provide alerts. Combined with credit/identity alerts and best practices for online security, there is no reason for a major player like FB to start scanning faces....