Facebook sued for privacy violation over photo-tagging feauture

Facebook says it will fight claims that it violated users' privacy when it stores their facial features. The issue stems from friends tagging, friends in photos.

Subscribers of the social network sued the company, claiming that they had not given permission for their faces to be used as biometric identifiers.

On Thursday, US district judge James Donato in San Francisco turned down a motion to drop the case.

Facebook had claimed that an Illinois state statute in question did not apply to it, because its headquarters are in Menlo Park, California.

Under the Illinois Biometric Information Privacy Act companies are barred from storing information such as facial features, without people's approval.

A Facebook spokeswoman said that the company could not comment directly on the case.

She added that while she could not share exactly how the social network's facial recognition technology worked, it did measure the distance between, say, a person's eyes, nose and ears to help it recognise users' faces.

The spokeswoman also emphasised that the company did not sell its users' data, ''regardless of what that data is.''

According to Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum in San Diego, she still saw problems with Facebook policies.

''People who consent to tagging, it would be very difficult for them to understand that when you allow someone to auto-tag you, you are really engaging in a lot of facial biometrics,'' she said,www.sfgate.com reported.

''I don't think even to this day that Facebook makes that clear enough.''

The photo-tagging function had been a part of Facebook since 2010. It uses facial recognition software, the tool identify users in photos and automatically tag them.

In March, tech giant Google faced similar charges of violation of Illinois law, over its photo-tagging system which, like Facebook's, used ''faceprints'' to identify people in images.

In response to allegations that it was not given permission to use peoples' faces as biometric identifiers, the social network argues that the feature is divulged in its terms of service, reports CNBC.