Facebook overlooked consumer privacy

Connecticut's Attorney General is concerned over Facebook's use of facial recognition technology to identify users, the Reuters reports. He has requested a meeting with Facebook officials to discuss ways to alleviate those concerns,.

Attorney General George Jepsen said in a letter to Facebook earlier this week that the world's No. 1 Internet social network appeared to have overlooked consumer privacy by analyzing the faces in photographs posted on the website and cataloging the recognition.

"The potential uses of facial recognition on this scale remain unclear but concerning," Jepsen wrote in the letter released by his office on Thursday, the source is writing.

The letter follows Facebook's broad deployment of its "Tag Suggestions" technology, which scans users' uploaded photos, comparing faces in the photos with previously uploaded photos to see if it can match people to the photos.

The lack of notification about the wider roll-out of the technology and Facebook's automatically enabling the technology in users' settings have raised concerns among some privacy advocates who say it should be up to users to allow it, says the news site.

Last week, a group of privacy advocate organizations filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission requesting an investigation.

Facebook, which has more than 500 million users, has said that automated photo-tagging suggestions are only made when new photos are added, that only friends are suggested and that users can disable the feature in their privacy settings, the Reuters is writing.