Facebook ignores data protection authorities
Posted: 08 Nov 2011, 14:23
 | The facial recognition system that Facebook has implemented has severe personal and privacy issues! The Germans that have established themselves as the most informed population in matters of Electronic privacy abuse, are critical towards this. Thus the Hamburg data protection authorities by Johannes Caspar demanded that Facebook should disable this feature and all data collected so far should be deleted. Facebook was given two weeks notice and should have responded today -which they didn't! Hamburg has threatened to take legal actions against Facebook and a German court could impose fines of $426,397/€300,000 for privacy breaches. It cannot be ruled out that Facebook considers this to be a small price to pay. |
The facial recognition data are stored on servers in the US - and this is the problem.
These data only have value if they are stored and used again in some other context later.
Like finding other pictures of you, including the one where you were drunk and puking on the main street after a college party 20 years ago.
This is considerably more fun if it concerns your friend that you took a picture of without his knowledge, all those years ago (and who is now running for president).
This function can be turned off if you have a looking glass and an IT engineering degree.
But the important point here is that you actively should accept that your face can be used like this. So the feature must be turned off as a default - and then the experts can go in and find where to turn it on after hours of looking - if they would want to.
Isn't it only fair that if your exceptional and unique face is making that much money, that you get a contract where you an accept the compensation, that should be at least as handsome as your face? As it is, Facebook is stealing your face and making money out of it.
May I suggest that you put up tents in front of the Facebook headquarters and demand your faces back.......