Facebook agrees to delete European users' facial recognition data

Source: LA Times

Facebook Inc. has agreed to delete all the facial recognition data it has collected from European users and switch off the feature in Europe by Oct. 15.

The move follows a review of the facial recognition feature that prompts users to "tag" friends in photos uploaded to the service.

Ireland’s privacy regulator Billy Hawkes said Facebook would not turn it back on without agreeing with his office on "the most appropriate means of collecting user consent." He said Facebook was "sending a clear signal of its wish to demonstrate its commitment to best practice in data protection compliance."

Hawkes' office, which began reviewing Facebook's compliance with Irish and European Union data protection rules in 2011, has urged Facebook to give users a better understanding of how their personal data is handled and increased control over privacy settings. He said that the "great majority" of the recommendations had been implemented to the regulator's satisfaction.

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/business/technology/la-fi-tn-facebook-facial-recognition-europe20120921,0,2613174.story

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5 replies	Author	Time	Post
Facebook agrees to delete European users' facial recognition data (Original post)	alp227	Sep 2012	OP
NPR;	greiner3	Sep 2012	#1
Delete, or archive offline for future open use and surreptitious use now?	ProgressiveEconomist	Sep 2012	#2
Seems like if Facebook can tell who you are, voting sites should be able to do the same without	2on2u	Sep 2012	#3
If I'm not mistaken, "facial recognition" in this case means recognizing part of a picture as a face	Thor_MN	Sep 2012	#4
but	LilSol	Sep 2012	#5

Response to alp227 (Original post)

Sat Sep 22, 2012, 07:00 AM

greiner3 (3,959 posts)

1. NPR;

Recently had a discussion on this topic. They were comparing Facebook's use of this technology vs. the US's.

As they usually do, one guest was for it and one nay sayer.

The nay sayer said it was not ok in either case, albeit in FB's case, there should be an OPT IN.

The 'other' person's case was that it was necessary for security, blah, blah blah in the case of the government. I've forgotten their case for FB but it had to do with 'users willingly sign up so they should read the fine print.

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Response to alp227 (Original post)

Sat Sep 22, 2012, 07:56 AM

ProgressiveEconomist (5,077 posts)

2. Delete, or archive offline for future open use and surreptitious use now?

Data = money for these folks.

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Response to alp227 (Original post)

Sat Sep 22, 2012, 09:37 AM

2on2u (1,843 posts)

3. Seems like if Facebook can tell who you are, voting sites should be able to do the same without

you trying to get 7 levels of id.

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Response to alp227 (Original post)

Sat Sep 22, 2012, 11:08 AM

Thor_MN (4,605 posts)

4. If I'm not mistaken, "facial recognition" in this case means recognizing part of a picture as a face

not recognizing a specific face. The recognizing a specific face is a human tagging the bit of a picture that the software identified as a face, with the name of the person whose face it is. The data generated from this would be a database of pictures of indivduals which would be useful for training the facial recognition software that we should be concerned about, but facebook's software is something less than true facial recognition.

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Response to Thor_MN (Reply #4)

Sat Sep 22, 2012, 07:11 PM

LilSol (50 posts)

5. but

But it is good, that the software stopped now

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