Facebook has launched a new mobile service that automatically uploads a user’s mobile photos to their social network account to review before publishing, sparking privacy concerns that the firm is looking to grab more personal data from their users.
Facebook is currently asking users of it mobile app to opt-in to a new Photo Sync option, a setting that will automatically upload every image taken with a mobile device to the social network’s vast data servers.
Once Photo Synch is enabled, each and every image taken by a mobile is automatically sent to Facebook’s servers and uploaded to a private album for that user to later log-in and review.
Should the user then decide they want certain pictures to go public, a click of the mouse from their computer will allow for the image to be made viewable to a select circle of friends; if no action is taken, the image will remain reserved only for the person who owns the profile — and Facebook.
Even if a Facebook user who’s enabled the website’s new Photo Sync service choses to keep all images private, those personal pictures are still sent over to the social networking site and stored on their computers. From there, Facebook can still access the image’s geolocation data and use it to keep track of where its users are and whom they’re posing with.
Facebook began advertising its Photo Sync service with mobile users this week and has not yet released any figures detailing the number of users that have enrolled in the program.
Recent figures, however, indicate that Facebook’s mobile app is used by more than 200 million customers each month, and around 300 million images are uploaded to its servers each day.
