Facebook To Face Privacy Lawsuit Over Photo-Tagging Feature

Facebook users who felt that their privacy was violated by the website's use of facial recognition software -- which it uses to help identify and tag people in photographs -- won an early legal victory Thursday when a San Francisco federal judge rejected a request by the internet company to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its collection of biometric information. "The court accepts as true plaintiffs' allegations that Facebook's face recognition technology involves a scan of face geometry that was done without plaintiffs' consent," U.S. District Judge James Donato ruled. Three Illinois residents filed separate lawsuits -- that were later combined -- under the state's Biometric Information Privacy Act of 2008, which allows companies to be sued for failing to get consumers' consent before collecting or storing their biometric information, which includes "faceprints" used by Facebook (and also Google) for identifying people in photographs. Facebook introduced its face-recognition feature in 2010. California, where Facebook is based, does not have a law regulating the use of biometrics.