{"id":25005,"date":"2024-07-31T09:10:05","date_gmt":"2024-07-31T17:10:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/07\/31\/news-18735\/"},"modified":"2024-07-31T09:10:05","modified_gmt":"2024-07-31T17:10:05","slug":"news-18735","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/2024\/07\/31\/news-18735\/","title":{"rendered":"Meta to pay $1.4 billion over unauthorized facial recognition image capture"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has announced<\/a> a $1.4 billion settlement<\/a> with Meta to \u201cstop the company\u2019s practice of capturing and using the personal biometric data of millions of Texans without the authorization required by law.\u201d<\/p>\n

The prime reason for the initial lawsuit that led to the settlement was Facebook\u2019s \u201cTag Suggestions\u201d feature that used facial recognition. This feature was rolled out in 2011 to \u201cimprove the user experience by making it easier for users to tag photographs with the names of people in the photo.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Meta allegedly automatically turned this feature on for all Texans without explaining how the feature worked. This method made it possible to run facial recognition software on virtually every face contained in the photographs uploaded to Facebook, capturing records of the facial geometry of the people depicted, for a long time.<\/p>\n

In 2019, Facebook said<\/a> it had always given control to users about the use of face recognition technology to recognize users in photos, but it wasn’t until December 2017 that Facebook introduced settings that allowed users to manage whether Facebook used face recognition technology on their photos to suggest tags. <\/p>\n

Texas\u2019s \u201cCapture or Use of Biometric Identifier\u201d (CUBI) Act forbids companies from capturing biometric identifiers of Texans, including records of face geometry, unless the business first informs the person and receives their consent to capture the biometric identifier.<\/p>\n

So, in February 2022, Attorney General Paxton sued Meta for unlawfully capturing the biometric data of millions of Texans without obtaining their informed consent as required by Texas law. Approximately two years after filing the petition, Texas reached a settlement agreement with Meta who will pay the state of Texas $1.4 billion over five years.<\/p>\n

The face recognition setting<\/a> is no longer available after Facebook reluctantly shut the Face Recognition system down by the end of 2021:<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cMaking this change required careful consideration, because we have seen a number of places where face recognition can be highly valued by people using platforms.<\/p>\n

We believe facial recognition can help for products like these with privacy, transparency and control in place, so you decide if and how your face is used. We will continue working on these technologies and engaging outside experts.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Personally, I feel since biometrics are increasingly used for identification by more important services than social media, those platforms have no business gathering them. Therefore, we welcome Facebook\u2019s move away from this kind of broad identification and will closely follow its planned future move toward narrower forms of personal authentication.<\/p>\n

We don’t just report on threats – we help protect your social media<\/strong><\/p>\n

Cybersecurity risks should never spread beyond a headline. Protect your social media accounts by using\u00a0Cyrus, powered by Malwarebytes<\/a>.<\/p>\n

https:\/\/blog.malwarebytes.com\/feed\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Meta has settled a Texas lawsuit over gathering biometric data for Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” feature without informed consent. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[10488,10378],"tags":[31729,3589,14753,24884,32,5897,15293],"class_list":["post-25005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malwarebytes","category-security","tag-biometric-data","tag-facebook","tag-facial-recognition","tag-meta","tag-news","tag-privacy","tag-settlement"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25005\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.palada.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}