June 14, 2011 6:04 PM EDT
The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) has filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission against Facebook’s facial recognition technology.
The group called the technology “biometric data collection” on Facebook’s part. This data, used to automate user identification from user photos, adversely impacts US consumers, said EPIC.
Facebook currently has about 150 million US users and over 600 million global users. It also possesses the largest collection of photographs of individuals of any company in the world. EPIC estimates that Facebook has 60 billion photos.
The group wants Facebook to “cease collection and use of users’ biometric data without their affirmative opt-in consent.”
Ever since Facebook rolled out and expanded its facial recognition technology, many users have become concerned and have taken it upon themselves to opt-out.
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Below are options to opt-out of the technology to various degrees.
To disable the auto-suggest feature for photo tagging:
Go to Account (upper right corner of homepage) - Privacy Settings - Custom settings (bottom middle) - Suggest photos of me to friends - Enabled/Disabled (check Disabled)
Request Facebook to remove your "summary information" from its facial recognition database:
Login to Facebook - Click on this link - Click the "contact us" hyperlink (In the sentence "You can contact us to request that we remove all of your photo summary information") - Send Facebook the automated message that pops up in the box
Temporarily disable your Facebook account (you are able to reactivate it later):
Go to Account (upper right corner of homepage) – Account Settings – Deactivate Account – Confirm
Permanently delete your Facebook account (you won’t be able to reactivate it later):
Login to Facebook – Click on this link - Submit
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