Recognizing Your Web-Wide Face

I've been testing out facial recognition technology on Facebook with an application called Photo Finder created by Israeli company, Face.com.

Photo Finder, still in alpha, has a main purpose: Making it easier to find photos of yourself and of your friends on Facebook. Sure, it's easy when those photos are tagged. But who knows how many of your glamour shots are floating around on the Web unmarked and, therefore, unseen? A huge detriment to your self-loving digital photo collage, isn't it?

When the app is installed, Photo Finder scans all photos in your albums, your friends' albums, and albums in your "wider network" -- making it possible to see photos of yourself and friends you wouldn't have necessarily come across in a regular Facebook search. By using Photo Finder, I was able to find untagged photos of people I'm connected to on Facebook, from strangers' albums, which they may not have wanted everyone to see.

As far as privacy goes, Face.com seems to pose little threat right now, as it's still in its alpha stage and not yet super-intelligent. However, testing out the software gave me pause to worry (read: panic, sweat profusely, cry myself to sleep) about the implications of such technology going forward.

Facial recognition technology takes Web stalking to a new level. The days of searching for tagged photos of someone (e.g., a present/prospective employee; a boyfriend/girlfriend) on Facebook, or doing a simple Google search for indexed photos, will soon seem as retro as typing on a typewriter, or listening to the Bee Gees on a first-generation iPod.

With facial recognition technology, people will be able to dig below the facade of the nice Web packages we smart users have created for ourselves by only tagging photos that make us appear intelligent -- and instead uncover those nude, beer-vomiting pics we'd left untagged in some "Friends Only" folder somewhere. We thought we were so clever... But they're on to us.

Once this type of technology starts to pick up online, this could drastically change, for example, the job application process. Imagine a prospective employer's ability to go searching for photos of you on the Web using facial recognition? As someone who's in the process of getting approved by an apartment board, I'd hate for the board members to stumble on a photo of me I don't know about, which may portray me in a negative light. (Dim is usually best.)

Surely once we start to adopt facial recognition technology some privacy measures will have to come along with it. For example, maybe I don't want people with whom I don't have a close, personal tie to be able to search for my face online. Fine. But there's only so far these privacy measures go, there's always a loophole, and the fact remains that the more we give to technology, the less we hold onto for ourselves.

So, what to do about it? Well, if you're scared, you can do your part by not uploading pictures or videos of yourself to the Web. But that's only 5 percent of the job. Ensuring full protection from facial recognition technology would require you to destroy all digital and physical instances of yourself caught on camera, never allow yourself to be photographed again, and possibly even go around destroying the cameras Google and others have hidden all over the world.

And just for added privacy, you should probably walk around with a bag over your head, have your fingerprints removed, and consider moving in with a nice, Amish family.

Maybe then, at least, you'll have a 50/50 shot.

? Nicole Ferraro, Site Editor, Internet Evolution