The new facial recognition photo-tagging feature that was rolled out on Facebook this week has got privacy-freaks in a frenzy, but none more so than European Union data-protection regulators, who are investigating it for privacy violations.
Watchdogs from 27 countries will be looking into the feature to determine if it violates a user's privacy, with one of the members of the Article 29 Data Protection Working Party, Gerard Lommel, giving an early taste of the group's opinion: "tags of people on pictures should only happen based on people's prior consent and it can't be activated by default."
Like with many of Facebook's new features, most of those in uproar over the new feature believe that Facebook should have the tool turned off by default, and activated only when a user is sure s/he wants to be tagged automatically. Until the EU decides it contravenes the continent's citizens' privacy and forces Facebook to change its ways, you can manually adjust the settings yourself, by following Lifehacker's guide. [Business Week]