Facebook’s automated photo tagging prompts EU probe

European Union data-protection regulators will probe Facebook after it started a global rollout of its new face-recognition photo-tagging system.

The new feature “recognizes” faces in photos, shortening the often tedious tagging process, which enables users to connect a face in a photo with an actual friend on Facebook. The process is now semi-automated: Facebook provides suggestions for individuals in photos, and the user chooses to accept or reject them.

The feature is enabled by default, but it can be disabled by customizing your privacy settings.

However, European Union regulators think that this feature is a potential privacy risk. “Tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people’s prior consent and it can’t be activated by default,” said Gerard Lommel, a Luxembourg member of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party.

In the past, EU regulators have scrutinized companies such as Microsoft (for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows) as well as Google and Yahoo for storing data search queries for too long. Facebook, too, was criticized for not doing enough to protect the privacy of its users.

What do you think? Is this feature a privacy risk? Should it be enabled by default?