America
Facebook in soup over 'stealing' personal data
New York, April 8
Facebook is in legal trouble over usage of personal data of its users for its facial recognition features, media reports said.
Carlo
Licata from Illinois claimed that Facebook broke the law by collecting
biometric data used for the social network's tag suggestions feature.
Licata,
who filed the suit in Illinois' Cook county circuit court recently,
said he "never gave permission for Facebook to collect or store
biometric data, nor was he notified or given an opportunity to prohibit
or prevent it from doing so".
In a statement, a Facebook
spokesperson said Licata's lawsuit was "without merit" and that the
company plans to "defend ourselves vigorously", the Mashable reported.
Facebook introduced tag suggestions in 2010 as a way to make tagging photos easier.
The
feature automatically suggests tags for the faces of people you're
friends with and improves over time as you tag more photos.
Although Facebook provides a way users can disable the feature, Licata's lawyer said this doesn't go far enough.
"If
he changed the privacy setting, that wouldn't change anything because
Facebook had taken his data and they're holding on to it," Licata's
attorney Jay Edelson was quoted as saying.