Better Off Ted
We love the ABC show “Better Off Ted”, but the last aired episode 13 Secrets and Lives just hit the spot with us facers.
“It all starts during an innocent meeting where Ted, Lem and Phil discuss a new search engine they’re developing. Instead of being text-based, it would be capable of finding pictures of someone all over the web based off their scanned image.”
You see where this is going, right…? Go watch it 
What appears to be science fiction to these guys is a mere reality for our Photo Finder users, and we love to hear that sometimes you’ll find that special photo that beats even those hilarious moments on the show. Face search technology can be really funny sometimes, so let us know if you came across a photo you completely forgot about, didn’t expect, or was just too funny to pass!
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thanks for invite to register to your profile thank you…..
mec cool ki salu ttout lz monde
I don’t understand what’s so funny about people’s privacy, or the fact I’m probably in your databases even though I never asked to be, nor do I have a facebook account.
I find it actually actually pretty disturbing to think that your database probably has Tens of millions of people’s metrics by now and could potentially be broken into, stolen and abused. Those people are not offered an opt-out, as far as I tell, nor will they ever know that the problem exists, until at some point this information may harm them.
Isn’t it time you address some of these issues on your home page?
I totally agree with Ira.
Face.com I would like to hear your reply to this privacy invasion.
Hi Ira and Marian -
Thanks for following up on face.com!
Although not in the front of what we do, privacy has always been enforced in the background of everything we do. Back in April we posted information and guidelines to help understand and gear privacy settings, including opting out (check out http://blog.face.com/2009/04/19/some-privacy-please). We’re currently working on a more complete privacy policy which we’ll post on our homepage soon.
At high level – we do not store information which is not already on Facebook, and in fact only point to it. This means we rely entirely on user sessions to retrieve information or search, and also assures that all access to information goes back-to-back with Facebook’s policies and settings. We invested a lot of effort to come up with a method that makes sure that the information face.com store remains meaningless even if you had full access to it.
I’d love to open up the discussion and send you over working drafts of our privacy policy for review. If you’re interested, please drop me a line at gil@face.com
Thanks!
-Gil
Gil,
Policies are nice, and I am certain Klinger did a wonderful job with words and all, but the fact remains: I go to conferences, I have my picture taken, it gets published on flickr or facebook and other places, I would not know it if I’m not specifically tagged and go look for it. I can’t look for it on facebook because it’s a walled garden, and I have a long list of other reasons not to open an account there.
That suggests I may be tagged in pictures I will never see, inside a walled garden I have never visited nor want to, but if I’m not a member I can’t opt out or be informed of the problem!
Right now, as you may know, our own DMV here in Israel is collecting a very unsecure “biometric grade” picture database of all the drivers. It’s their condition that I join that DB if I want my license renewed. that database has already been transmitted in parts over plain TCP on the public net, not even SSL at times, and is shared with at least 5-10 private companies that tender services using it, and naturally it’s shared with other ministries and possibly the police as well. It’s a matter of time before it is leaked, and I can assume any information of your application is flowing around facebook is already collected by the FBI and NSA:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/08/technology/08stream.html?_r=1&ref=technology
http://reason.com/blog/2009/12/03/yahoo-and-verizon-how-much-do
Since this is the case, I think the time came for you to disclose those risks, as they affect not only registered users of Facebook. The abuse of this info by the authorites, or more scary, the use of this info by criminals when it leaks is quite alarming. I’d appreciate if you could tell us how that central database is protected against theft? how you would handle a court order or a payment to hand over the DB? How do you protect people who are not on Facebook?
In other words: How easy or hard is it to use your DB if stolen, to identify random people on the street with a camera phone and an internet hookup? Lots of criminals would love to have that, as well as the police and other agencies. What are you doing to guard that data?
Thanks in advance,
Ira.
To continue the thread Ira and Marian started:Do you require some proof that the indexer is indeed the guy in the photo, which is the simplest way to stop people from indexing other people without their consent?Do you require some show of agreement from the person being so indexed, and if so, what?What recourse do have people without Facebook accounts have?Do you even inform people who are being indexed with your tool?
Hi Opher -
Thanks for joining the discussion – I hope the following information will clear things up:
For our current apps, the index information you’re referring to is maintained and shared by facebook, here’s how: when a person is tagged by themselves or by one of their friends they are added to facebook’s photo index, which is then shared inside and outside of facebook based on users’ privacy settings. Face.com access this information each time it needs to provide a service through authenticated application user sessions, which is also how we can guarantee users’ settings and restrictions are respected in real-time. This also means that non-facebook users cannot be found with our current services.
As you pointed out – face.com’s applications also support tagging of facebook users to increase photo sharing. Similarly to facebook, face.com notifies our users as soon they are tagged so they can take action.
I hope I answered your questions – drop me a line here or at gil@face.com whenever you want to continue this discussion.
-Gil
Hi Ira -
Just noticed your comment was pending in our blog system – it appears that all comments with links (including ours…) await approvals to avoid spam… I think it’s fixed now.
Anyway, to your point – we took a design approach that only stores partial information on our database. No photos, not even urls, just pointers. Check out some more info on that in my previous comment, including why non-facebook users aren’t in the loop of our services. The bottom line is that even if a hacker or the government broke in and took over our database, they would still need to access information through authenticated sessions on facebook in order to make it meaningful and identifiable. We believe that such approach, where possible, is always better. Of course we also protect our data behind secured firewalls, in a secured facility, and take additional measures as needed.
I guess our biggest guardian is our users, alpha testers, bloggers, and feedback groups. While we try to provide the best experience for our users, we use your help to make sure we didn’t miss out on anything. As always, I’m happy to keep this discussion going.
-Gil
Heramoderna
Gracias por dejarnos opoinar y participar de la web, es muy entretenida, podrian ponerla en castellano spanish, asi se nos seria mas facil y mas rapido entender.