Face recognition app raises privacy concerns on social media

Starting as a project of a photographer who wanted to illustrate how open source technologies would effect the future, face recognition app FindFace quickly took over Russia since the beginning of its launch in April.

But, despite already attracting attention of 500,000 users the app also raised concerns within its target group, social media users.

The application claims 70 percent accuracy for its face recognition technology which was created to synchronise with the photo database of popular Russian social network Vkontakte.

The founders of FindFace say they are not violating the privacy of anyone since they are only using the photos which have their privacy setting adjusted as public.

International software company Adesso's senior software developer in its Turkey office, Ayse Araz, told TRT World that even if a social network profile owner's photos are adjusted as public in settings, that person still has the right to remain unidentified in public and that right needed to be protected.

Many social media users stated that adjusting privacy settings of personal photos in social network profiles as public didn't mean agreeing to be identified publicly.

On the other hand, some social media users agreed that finding someone on social media just with a simple photo could be ‘something beautiful' despite being sceptic about the consequences of possible privacy violations.