Minnesota, USA -June 9, 2011 - Perhaps you noticed that you are being tagged in more Facebook photos than normal; unfortunately, it is not just your friends giving you more recognition in their photos, but Facebook taking control of your 'face' by default. Ultimately, most people consider this a violation to their privacy rights since they must 'opt-out' rather than 'opt-in'. Undeniably Facebook has stirred up another controversial issue without seeming to have a single care in the world.

Even though I understand the issues that come with this new face recognition tool, it is as important to understand the benefits of this as well; it is easy to focus on only one side of the issue when in reality there are more multiple angles in which to view anything. In as much as I would like to send Facebook through the slaughtering machine, enough people already did this before me.

The concept of having your face digitally stored somewhere and readily available to be compared to billions of photos can be a scary thought. But I can remember a time when an idea like this provoked curiosity and excitement; maybe the fascination in something scanning parts of your body, such as your eyes, lost its appeal to people now that it is more than an idea, but something that is happening online. Sometimes we must think of it in another way; the online world is bound to eventually know each of our faces, so why do we get overexcited about it finally happening We cannot stop it forever.

The obvious benefit to face recognition is that it is easier to have multiple photo tags of people without much effort. For someone like me who does not take time to tag others in photos, it gives us the opportunity to share our photos without the ridiculous time consuming task of clicking faces and labeling them with a name. Obviously this will prompt more interaction between friends as they can see all the photos that they are in and can give any comment -which in my experience can easily add up to dozens.

The downfall of automatically being tagged in photos is that not every photo is something that you want others to see. Fortunately, it is easy to just 'untag' yourself and move on with your day. I would consider this a bigger concern if Facebook would not allow people to delete the tag. If there are so many embarrassing or controversial photos of you out there, I would recommend being conscious in front of the camera to avoid this problem.

The other upside to this feature is that your friends are the only ones who can tag your photos; this way it is not as likely that a photo of a person could be mistaken for you. You do not need to worry about strangers seeing your name in the tag.  I cannot say that Facebook would not make a mistake in identifying your face when it is another friend's face, but at least there is comfort in knowing that it should be among people in your friends circle.

If this face recognition still does not feel right for you, you can always access the privacy settings; click on "suggest photos of me to friends" under the "Things to Share" and choose to disable the feature. Sadly you must opt-out if you do not want to be a part of it. Luckily this can be easily done!