[b]A group of privacy watchdogs drawn from the EU’s 27 nations will study the measure for possible rule violations, said Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the so-called Article 29 Data Protection Working Party. Authorities in the U.K. and Ireland said they are also looking into the photo-tagging function on the world’s most popular social-networking service.

“Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” said Lommel. Such automatic tagging suggestions “can bear a lot of risks for users” and the European data-protection officials will “clarify to Facebook that this can’t happen like this.”

According to Bloomberg report, Facebook said Wednesday on its blog that “Tag Suggestions” are available in most countries after being phased in over several months. When a Facebook user adds a photo to their page, the feature uses facial-recognition software to suggest names of people in the photo to tag based on pictures in which they have already been identified. Before the feature was rolled out, users could tag pictures manually without permission from their Facebook friends.

The feature is active by default on existing users’ accounts and Palo Alto, California-based Facebook explains on its blog how people can disable the function, if they don’t want their names to be automatically suggested for other people’s pictures.

“We launched Tag Suggestions to help people add tags of their friends in photos; something that’s currently done more than 100 million times a day,” Facebook said in an e-mailed statement. “Tag suggestions are only made to people when they add new photos to the site, and only friends are suggested.”

Facebook is among U.S. companies that have faced scrutiny in the EU for possible privacy breaches. Google Inc. (GOOG), Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Yahoo! Inc. have been pushed by European data- protection officials to limit the amount of time they store online users’ search records. The group has also criticized Facebook for policy changes that could harm users’ privacy.

The U.K.’s Information Commissioner’s Office is “speaking to Facebook” about the privacy aspects of the technology, said Greg Jones, a spokesman for the group.

“We would expect Facebook to be upfront about how people’s personal information is being used,” Jones said. “The privacy issues that this new software might raise are obvious.”

The Irish data-protection authority is also looking into the issue, said spokeswoman Ciara O’Sullivan.

The Article 29 group guides the work of national data- protection agencies, which have the power to punish companies that break privacy rules.[/b]
SOURCE: THISDAY ONLINE

face book or fake book.

I dn't hav issues with d photo tag thang,but with d malicious links posted by black hat hackers,redirecting you to hoaxes sites to steal ur login info, facebook shud improve on dis,cuz alot of accounts r hacked daily with d use of social engineering.

I dn't hav issues with d photo tag thang,because u can untag ursef, D problem is d malicious links posted by black hat hackers,redirecting you to hoaxes sites to steal ur login info, facebook shud improve on dis,cuz alot of accounts r hacked daily with d use of social engineering.

efepro:

I dn't hav issues with d photo tag thang,because u can untag ursef, D problem is d malicious links posted by black hat hackers,redirecting you to hoaxes sites to steal your login info, facebook shud improve on dis,cuz alot of accounts r hacked daily with d use of social engineering.

U re right. Messages like "I just lost 10kg of weight in 10 days. Click the link below to see how I did it." are good examples. I clicked one some couple of weeks ago and knew something was wrong. I just changed my password sharp sharp.

I totally agree with this.Its about time FB do something about
this tagging thin abeg.

Facebook Tagging my foot!!!

Imagine somebody u didnt know tagged u to a nude photo! Hw will you feel

seriously what is this oyinbos's problems wif dos n don'ts?
i tire for this pipo oh. wetin dey worry them self!!

well for me i have made hundreds of thousand of naira just via facebook tagging
you wanna learn how?
follow on twitter @huntellagadgets
www.huntella.com

honestli no point in all dey re sayin here, cos taggin is nt a big dealio so why re dey feelin important lik dey re the first person on fb, i love fb die, f*ck yew haterz of FB, NoStringsAttach

Yeah I think it's about time facebook do something to prevent people being tagged in a mess.
It's really an issue to be attended to.