Social networking sites need to obtain users’ “informed consent” before suggesting to other users that those individuals feature in photos that they are uploading to the site, an EU privacy watchdog has said.
The Article 29 Working Party said, though, that the networks can process the images legitimately without the consent of those featured in the photos under EU data protection laws in order to assess whether that consent has been given. However, it said that sites processing images in order to verify consent must delete that information “immediately after” that processing is complete.
Facebook is one social network that uses facial recognition technology automatically to suggest the names of people featured in photos uploaded by users.
Users can ‘tag’ themselves and their friends in photos they upload to the site. The tag labels the pictures with pop-up captions to enable people who view the photos to identify who is in the shot by hovering their cursor over the picture. The company launched the feature in 2010 for users in the US and it is now widely available to users in most countries.
Social networks need consent from users in the first place in order to store “templates” of images that can be used to verify users’ identity, the Working Party said.
The group said that the social networks must have the consent of the “image uploaders” in order for processing of those images to “take place for the purposes of facial recognition.” Registered users must be “clearly informed” that images they upload “will be subject to a facial recognition system” before they upload them.
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