14 DAY TRIAL // Facebook has recently become involved in another lawsuit and probably no one will be surprised at the news, but it has to do with privacy issues again.
Courthouse News reported that Carlo Licata sued the company for having violated the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008 through its “tag suggestions” feature.
In its attempt to make things easier for its users, Facebook might have broken this law which clearly states that a company has to obtain written consent from a person before collecting any type of biometric data.
The plaintiffs claim that Facebook has "secretly amassed the world's largest privately held database of consumer biometrics data," after acquiring the Israeli company known as Face.com in order to take up its face recognition program.
They also stated that such practices are illegal in Illinois, without the person’s consent.
According to Licata, Facebook is able to identify other people in by using its biometric database, a thing which is unknown by its userbase.
It seems that Facebook has refused to make any comments on the matter, but Facebook privacy and public policy manager Robert Sherman did declare back in 2012 that the tagging feature was perfectly secure and that the facial recognition technology did not violate users’ privacy in any way.
Furthermore, he claimed that users were given the possibility to opt out of the face recognition program.
Users have the option to disable the controversial feature
Apparently, not everyone is aware of the fact that this function can be disabled from Facebook Settings. All you have to do is go on "Timeline and Tagging" and just under "How can I manage tags people add and tagging suggestions," there should be another option called "Who sees tag suggestions when photos that look like you are uploaded?" From there, all you have to do is select "No One."
This should prevent your face from being suggested in other people's photos.
However, Licata claims that he had been completely unaware of this and he had never been asked for permission to have his face in the biometric database.
Facebook has been using this tagging feature since 2010, offering users suggestions of who the people in their pictures might be based on facial similarities with other Facebook users.
These tactics were forbidden in the European space in 2012, due to Europe’s strict data protection laws, and the company agreed to get rid of any data gathered to recognize people in photos.