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Find My Face: facial recognition with less privacy angst

Find My Face on Google+ is opt-in feature. So Google+ users won't have facial recognition unless they choose Find My Face.

Way to not tick off the privacy hounds, Google!

For its social service,听, the company is rolling out facial recognition features, but only if you want it to.

The new 鈥淔ind My Face鈥� feature is something you have to specifically opt into.

Find My Face, if and when you enable it, has the ability to find any photos your friends have uploaded that include your face. It will also prompt your friends to tag you if you appear in new and previously uploaded images.

You can choose to accept or reject tags on a one-by-one basis. And you can also turn off the feature anytime.

Facial recognition (and subsequent privacy-related media meltdown) is familiar turf, both for Google and for social networks in general.

When reporters got wind of an upcoming听, the reactions around the web weren鈥檛 entirely positive. In fact, we said at the time that it 鈥渟ounds great for stalkers.鈥�

But the Googler in charge of that project, Hartmut Neven, said it wasn鈥檛 yet being released for exactly that reason.

鈥淲e recognize that Google has to be extra careful when it comes to these [privacy] issues,鈥� Neven said. 鈥淔ace recognition we will bring out once we have acceptable privacy models in place.鈥�

In the summer of 2011, Facebook 蝉迟补谤迟别诲听. While we said at the time that privacy concerns around the feature were 鈥渧astly overblown,鈥� regulators didn鈥檛 quite agree. Several European privacy authorities even听听on the matter.

However, by making a simple opt-in procedure, Google will let the 鈥減rivacy-schmivacy鈥� set enjoy the benefits of the new tech while sidestepping any accusations of dirty dealing from those who take privacy a bit more seriously.

At least in this case, we find that a little explicit permission goes a long way.

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