Apple iOS, Google Android new device activations skyrocket

29 December 2011

Activations of new iOS and Android devices soared on Christmas Day, jumping by 142% over the same day last year, a Web metrics company said.

The top 20 Apple commercials

Meanwhile, Google’s head of mobile claimed that 3.7 million new Android smartphones and tablets had been activated last weekend.

According to Flurry, which provides metrics services to app developers, total activations of new iOS and Android devices reached 6.8 million on Sunday, Christmas Day. That was 142% above the previous one-day record of 2.8 million activations on Dec. 25, 2010, and a 353% increase over the average of 1.5 million activations daily between Dec. 1 and Dec. 20, 2011.

Not surprisingly, Flurry attributed the massive jump in iOS — iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch — and Android phone and tablet activations to holiday gift giving.

In a Tuesday blog post , Flurry said that its metrics services — used by more than 140,000 iOS and Android apps — “detects roughly 100% of all new iOS and Android devices activated each day.”

Google added to the activation number discussion today.

“There were 3.7M Android devices activated on 12/24 and 12/25,” said Andy Rubin, senior vice president of mobile at the Mountain View, Calif.-based company, in a tweet early Wednesday.

Rubin’s timespan of both days last weekend — Christmas Eve as well as Christmas Day — differed from Flurry’s Dec. 25-only period.

Earlier this month, Rubin claimed that more than 700,000 Android devices were being activated daily, up from approximately 300,000 devices each day in December 2010.

Apple does not discuss activation numbers for iOS devices, although some mobile carriers do. Last October, for example, AT&T said it had activated 2.7 million iPhones in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, 2011, or about 29,300 per day.

Last year, Apple sold 16.2 million iPhones in the fourth quarter, and 7.3 million iPads . However, most analysts are betting that Apple will nearly double the iPhone number this year, and sell more than 12 million iPads during the period.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com .

See more articles by Gregg Keizer .

Read more about smartphones in Computerworld’s Smartphones Topic Center.

Source:-http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122811-apple-ios-google-android-new-254435.html

Google wants groups removed from Books lawsuits

27 December 2011

Google asked a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by groups representing authors and photographers on Thursday, saying the groups could not sue over copyrights they did not own.

The motion was the latest development in a legal battle that has been raging since 2005, when The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers sued to block Google from scanning millions of books in libraries and making digitized content from them available in libraries and online. They charge that scanning the books without always seeking permission would violate copyrights. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) filed a similar lawsuit last year, which is being considered alongside the authors’ case.

Google’s motion seeks to remove The Authors Guild and the ASMP from the lawsuits. They don’t have legal standing to sue over the copyrights because they aren’t copyright holders but merely represent them, Google argued in its brief supporting the motion.

“The associations are not proper parties to this copyright infringement case because they themselves do not claim to own any copyright at issue,” Google wrote in the brief to Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan.

Google had told Judge Chin it planned to file motions for dismissal, and the judge had set Friday as a deadline. Google did not file a similar motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers. The company is believed to be closer to reaching a settlement with the plaintiffs in that case.

Google launched the library scanning project in 2004. One copyright settlement was already reached in 2008, but Judge Chin rejected that agreement in March.

The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions filed Thursday, and Google will then have until Feb. 3 to respond to their opposition.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122411-google-wants-groups-removed-from-254401.html

Google wants groups removed from Books lawsuits

26 December 2011

Google asked a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by groups representing authors and photographers on Thursday, saying the groups could not sue over copyrights they did not own.

The motion was the latest development in a legal battle that has been raging since 2005, when The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers sued to block Google from scanning millions of books in libraries and making digitized content from them available in libraries and online. They charge that scanning the books without always seeking permission would violate copyrights. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) filed a similar lawsuit last year, which is being considered alongside the authors’ case.

Google’s motion seeks to remove The Authors Guild and the ASMP from the lawsuits. They don’t have legal standing to sue over the copyrights because they aren’t copyright holders but merely represent them, Google argued in its brief supporting the motion.

“The associations are not proper parties to this copyright infringement case because they themselves do not claim to own any copyright at issue,” Google wrote in the brief to Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan.

Google had told Judge Chin it planned to file motions for dismissal, and the judge had set Friday as a deadline. Google did not file a similar motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers. The company is believed to be closer to reaching a settlement with the plaintiffs in that case.

Google launched the library scanning project in 2004. One copyright settlement was already reached in 2008, but Judge Chin rejected that agreement in March.

The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions filed Thursday, and Google will then have until Feb. 3 to respond to their opposition.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122411-google-wants-groups-removed-from-254401.html

Google wants groups removed from Books lawsuits

24 December 2011

Google asked a federal court to dismiss copyright claims against its Google Books project by groups representing authors and photographers on Thursday, saying the groups could not sue over copyrights they did not own.

The motion was the latest development in a legal battle that has been raging since 2005, when The Authors Guild and the American Association of Publishers sued to block Google from scanning millions of books in libraries and making digitized content from them available in libraries and online. They charge that scanning the books without always seeking permission would violate copyrights. The American Society of Media Photographers (ASMP) filed a similar lawsuit last year, which is being considered alongside the authors’ case.

Google’s motion seeks to remove The Authors Guild and the ASMP from the lawsuits. They don’t have legal standing to sue over the copyrights because they aren’t copyright holders but merely represent them, Google argued in its brief supporting the motion.

“The associations are not proper parties to this copyright infringement case because they themselves do not claim to own any copyright at issue,” Google wrote in the brief to Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Manhattan.

Google had told Judge Chin it planned to file motions for dismissal, and the judge had set Friday as a deadline. Google did not file a similar motion to dismiss the lawsuit by the Association of American Publishers. The company is believed to be closer to reaching a settlement with the plaintiffs in that case.

Google launched the library scanning project in 2004. One copyright settlement was already reached in 2008, but Judge Chin rejected that agreement in March.

The plaintiffs will have until Jan. 23 to respond to the motions filed Thursday, and Google will then have until Feb. 3 to respond to their opposition.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122411-google-wants-groups-removed-from-254401.html

Plans to migrate LAPD to Google’s cloud apps dropped

23 December 2011

After more than two years of trying, the City of Los Angeles has abandoned plans to migrate its police department to Google’s hosted email and office application platform saying the service cannot meet certain FBI security requirements.

Google Apps failing LAPD, says advocacy group

As a result, close to 13,000 law-enforcement employees will remain indefinitely on the LAPD’s existing Novell GroupWise applications, while other city departments will use the Google Apps for Government cloud platform.

Council members last week amended a November 2009 contract the city has with systems integrator Computer Science Corp. (CSC) under which CSC was supposed to have replaced LA’s GroupWise e-mail system with Google’s email and collaboration system. Under the amended contract, the LAPD will no longer move its email applications to Google.

Instead, Google will pay up to $350,000 per year for the LAPD to maintain its GroupWise licenses for the entire term of the CSC contract and any extensions beyond that. Google will also substantially reduce the amount it charges for the rest of the city’s use of Google Apps. Under the amendment, CSC too will reduce its initial integration fee for the project by $250,000.

Earlier this month, LA’s chief legislative analyst, Gerry Miller, and its chief administrative officer, Miguel Santana, said the contract amendment was necessary because the Google service could not be brought into compliance with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Systems (CJIS) requirements.

“Although CSC does not have the technical ability to comply with the City’s security requirements, it should be noted that the DOJ requirements are not currently compatible with cloud computing,” the two wrote in a memo to council members.

The CJIS database is maintained by the FBI and is one of the world’s largest repositories of criminal history records and fingerprints. The records are accessible to law enforcement officials around the country, but all entities authorized to access the database are required to comply with a strict set of security requirements pertaining to the manner in which the data is accessed, shared, transmitted, stored and destroyed. The security requirements include encryption of all data, both in transit and at rest, and FBI background checks on anyone who accesses the database. The policy applies to anyone with access to the database, including contractors.

The contract amendment proposal recommended by Miller and Santana does not make it clear how Google and CSC failed to comply with those requirements.

In the past however, city officials have not minced words in expressing their frustration over the issue. In a strongly worded notice of deficiencies to CSC last December, LA CTO Randi Levin blasted Google and CSC for repeatedly committing to deadlines for implementing the security requirements but then failing to meet them. At the time, Levin noted that the delays had forced the LAPD to move about 1,900 users who had migrated to Google’s new email system back to the old GroupWise platform. The delay also caused the LAPD to postpone its planned migration of 4,000 more users to the new system last October, Levin said.

In April, the Los Angeles Times reported that the city was considering suing Google and CSC over their delay in implementing the CJIS security requirements, despite assuring city officials that they would do so.

Google maintains that the LAPD’s security requirements were never part of the original contract. The company claims that the security requirements were introduced only after the migration to Google Apps was well underway at LA. According to the company, CJIS requirements are incompatible with cloud computing environments, and therefore present a unique challenge not just for Google but any cloud vendor attempting to migrate a law enforcement system to the cloud.

On Tuesday, the company reiterated those claims in an emailed statement: “We’re disappointed that the City introduced requirements for the LAPD after the contract was signed that are, in its own words, ‘currently incompatible with cloud computing,’ the Google statement said. “We realize this means the LAPD may not be joining the 17,000 other City employees successfully using Google Apps. Even so, Los Angeles taxpayers have already saved more than two million dollars and the City expects to save millions more in the years ahead.”

Jeff Gould, CEO of IT consulting firm Peerstone Research, said that Google’s problems may have to do with an FBI requirement that all IT contractor personnel pass a criminal background check and sign a document known as the FBI Security Addendum. Levin’s notice of deficiency says that the LAPD embarked on its migration to Google Apps based on the understanding that Google and CSC employees, who were required to sign the addendum, would do so by October 2010.

However, some of Google’s support staff with access to Google Apps for Government servers, are based in Europe and will likely be unwilling to sign such an addendum, said Gould, who belongs to a group called Safegov.org that is focused on promoting a set of best practices for cloud deployment in the government. The FBI does not mandate that support personnel be based in the U.S, he said. However, EU law might make it difficult for Google and others to get European employees to submit to FBI screening and fingerprinting, he said.

Gould added that it is disingenuous for Google or others to claim that CJIS requirements are incompatible with cloud environments. Google and CSC should have known what the requirements were because the CJIS policy document at the time the contract was signed clearly spells them out.

Going forward, the LAPD has the option of upgrading GroupWise, switching to a competing on-premise technology, or moving to cloud email services such as Microsoft ‘s Exchange Online, which complies with CJIS, he said.

The lesson here for other city governments looking to move their police departments to cloud apps is not to get scared off by LA’s experience, Gould said. Rather what it highlights is the need for them to do their due diligence better before embarking on it, he said.

“I see CJIS compliance requirements posing a problem for all large-scale cloud vendors, which are having difficulty getting U.S. nationals to perform all cloud-related work,” said Matthew Cain, an analyst with Gartner. “Most mega-vendors utilize some off-shore resources for development and operational reasons.”

An LA City spokeswoman directed questions about the city’s decision to Levin and to an LAPD spokeswoman. Neither one could be reached immediately.

Jaikumar Vijayan covers data security and privacy issues, financial services security and e-voting for Computerworld. Follow Jaikumar on Twitter at @jaivijayan or subscribe to Jaikumar’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is jvijayan@computerworld.com .

Read more about cloud computing in Computerworld’s Cloud Computing Topic Center.

Source: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122211-plans-to-migrate-lapd-to-254350.html?page=1

Senators urge FTC to investigate Google

20 December 2011

Two U.S. senators on Monday urged the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to investigate Google for possible antitrust violations.

In June, Google acknowledged that the FTC had launched a review of its business, but the FTC has not offered specifics about what aspects of Google’s business it is examining.

Senator Herb Kohl, a Wisconsin Democrat, and Senator Mike Lee, a Utah Republican, have asked the FTC to look at the alleged practice at Google of listing its own websites and products first in Web searches. “While we take no position on the ultimate legality of Google’s practices under the antitrust laws and the FTC Act, we believe these concerns warrant a thorough investigation by the FTC,” they wrote in a letter to the agency.

Kohl and Lee oversaw hearings earlier this year examining whether Google favors its own properties in Web search results. Google Chairman Eric Schmidt testified during that hearing.

The letter goes on to quote Marissa Mayer, a Google vice president, as saying in 2007 that Google does rank services such as Google Finance and Google Maps at the top of search results. The letter also refers to testimony during the hearings from executives at competitive Web organizations who said Google penalizes them in order to maintain its dominant market share in search.

“In sum, it appears the issues raised at our Subcommittee hearing merit serious scrutiny by the FTC,” they wrote. “According to Tom Barnett, the assistant attorney general for antitrust in the administration of President George W. Bush, the ultimate result of Google’s practices will be an Internet with fewer choices for consumers and businesses, higher prices and less innovation.”

They note that Google denies the arguments of its critics. Google did not immediately reply to a request for comment. The FTC typically does not disclose details of its investigations.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/122011-senators-urge-ftc-to-investigate-254239.html

Twitter stalking case dismissed by Maryland judge

19 December 2011

A U.S. judge in Maryland dismissed on Thursday a criminal case against a person who was charged with stalking a religious leader on Twitter, upholding “a tradition of protecting anonymous speech, particularly anonymous political or religious speech”.

District Judge Roger W. Titus of the United States District Court for the District of Maryland also observed that the religious figure could have protected her sensibilities simply by averting her eyes from the defendant’s blog and not looking at, or blocking his messages on Twitter.

Even though the Internet is the newest medium for anonymous, uncomfortable expression touching on political or religious matters, online speech is equally protected under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as there is no basis for qualifying the level of First Amendment scrutiny that should be applied to online speech, Judge Titus noted.

There are certain “well-defined and narrowly limited classes of speech” such as obscenity, defamation, fraud, and speech integral to criminal conduct that remain unprotected by the First Amendment, the Judge added.

Defendant, William Lawrence Cassidy, invoked the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment, after he was charged with violating a federal stalking statute.

His speech does not fall into any of the recognized exceptions to protection under the First Amendment, the Judge said. The First Amendment protects speech even when the subject or manner of expression is uncomfortable and challenges conventional religious beliefs, political attitudes or standards of good taste, he added.

Section 2261A is an interstate stalking statute originally passed as part of the Violence against Women’s Act, but was broadened in 2006 to include as intent not only the intent to “kill or injure,” but include the intent to “harass or place under surveillance with the intent to . . . harass or intimidate or cause substantial emotional distress”, the Judge said.

The requisite action was also broadened so as to bring within the scope of the law a course of conduct that merely “causes substantial emotional distress”, he added. The 2006 changes also expanded the mechanisms of injury to add use of an “interactive computer service” to the existing list which already included use of mail or any facility of interstate or foreign commerce.

Cassidy allegedly violated the statute by intentionally causing substantial emotional distress to the religious leader on Twitter and blogs, according to the government.

Twitter and Blogs are today’s equivalent of a bulletin board that one is free to disregard, in contrast, for example, to e-mails or phone calls directed to a victim, the Judge said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), which filed an amicus brief in this case, also pointed out that the religious leader was not merely a private individual but rather an easily identifiable public figure that leads a religious sect, and that many of the defendant’s statements relate to beliefs of the sect and her qualifications as a leader, the Judge said.

“Thus, this statute sweeps in the type of expression that the Supreme Court has consistently tried to protect,” he added.

EFF said in a statement on Thursday that it argued that even though some criticism of public figures may be offensive, emotional distress was not a sufficient basis on which to criminalize speech.

Source:-http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/121611-twitter-stalking-case-dismissed-by-254153.html?page=1

Chrome 15 puts IE8 in rear-view mirror, takes No. 1 spot

16 December 2011

Google’s Chrome 15 has jumped into the number one spot, replacing Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) as the world’s most popular browser edition.

Ireland-based StatCounter announced the passing of the baton today, citing data from the last three weeks that put Chrome 15 ahead of IE8 starting the week of Nov. 21.

It was the first time that IE8 had not held the top spot since early 2010, when it replaced IE7 as the most-widely-used browser, and the first time a non-Microsoft application has led the list in StatCounter’s tracking.

During the last two weeks of November and the first week of December, Chrome 15 accounted for 24% of the global browser usage market, compared to IE8′s 22.9%. Mozilla’s Firefox 8, meanwhile, held a 14% share during that period to take third place, and IE9, Microsoft’s newest version, had the fourth position with 10.4%.

Overall, IE retained its aggregate lead over Chrome, with Microsoft owning 39.5% of the market those three weeks compared to Google’s 26.5% and Mozilla’s 25.3%.

In the U.S., IE8 retained its top ranking, with 27% for the week of Dec. 5, nearly nine points higher than Chrome 15′s 18.1%, StatCounter said.

But Chrome 15′s global fame will be fleeting. Google released Chrome 16 on Tuesday , and with the browser’s automatic upgrade mechanism, most users of 15 will soon be running version 16.

Google’s latest coup was the second this month: According to StatCounter, Chrome pushed past Firefox in November to snatch the second cumulative spot behind IE.

U.S.-based Web measurement company Net Applications — which does not publicly release weekly stats — had a slightly different take on Chrome 15′s market share.

Net Applications’ data showed Chrome 15 with 14.6% of the worldwide market last month, in second place, but with only about half IE8′s 28.2% share. Behind Chrome 15, said Net Applications, were IE9 (10.3%), IE6, of all things (8%) and Firefox 8 (7.3%).

Those IE numbers will change if Microsoft new IE upgrading practices take hold. Today the company said it will automatically upgrade IE6 and IE7 on Windows XP to IE8, and upgrade IE7 and IE8 on Windows Vista and Windows 7 to IE9.

The new scheme kicks off next month in Australia and Brazil, and will be expanded to other markets, including the U.S., over time, Microsoft said.

Microsoft characterized the change as a way to push users to more modern browser, a move that will make “the Web overall better — and safer.”

If users don’t opt out of the auto-upgrades, IE6 and IE7 shares will decline, something Microsoft has been aggressively promoting for IE6 since mid-2009, and amped up last March with the debut of a special IE6 “deathwatch” website .

Chrome 15 edged past IE8 late last month to take the top spot among browser editions. (Data: StatCounter.)

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com .

See more articles by Gregg Keizer .

Read more about browsers in Computerworld’s Browsers Topic Center.

Source:-http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/121511-chrome-15-puts-ie8-in-254129.html

Google pulls 22 more malicious Android apps from Market

13 December 2011

Google has removed nearly two dozen malware-infected apps from its official Android Market in the last several days, a security company said Sunday.

So far this year, Google has yanked more than 100 malicious Android apps from its download distribution channel.

San Francisco-based Lookout Security said that it and other vendors had notified Google of several recent waves of malicious apps — 22 apps altogether — that reached the Android Market. Google has yanked those programs from the e-mart, said Lookout.

Lookout spotted nine malware-infected apps last week, and another 13 over the weekend.

The company dubbed the malware bundled with the fake apps “RuFraud,” and said that the code sent spurious text messages to premium numbers, racking up revenues for the criminals.

While North American users were not affected — RuFraud was written not to target the U.S., for instance — people in France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Russia, the U.K. and several other eastern European and central Asian countries were.

As in previous malicious app campaigns, the RuFraud apps borrowed elements of legitimate apps, but did not simply snatch complete apps, then re-package them with malicious code, said Lookout.

“They borrowed aspects of other apps, including terminology and in some cases identical text,” said Tim Wyatt, a principal engineer at Lookout.

The recent RuFraud operations began with horoscope apps, said Lookout, then moved on to Android phone wallpapers — including one for the Twilight series of movies — and downloaders posing as accessories to bestselling games such as “Angry Birds” and “Cut the Rope,” then finished with a round of fake games, Lookout’s researchers said.

That last run accounted for the majority of downloads before Google pulled the apps. Lookout estimated that about 14,000 copies of the fake games were grabbed by users.

“A couple of instances of the apps from this weekend really drove that [number],” added Derek Halliday, a Lookout senior security product manager. “The others really didn’t affect very many people as far as we know.”

Google has had trouble keeping malware out of the Android Market.

In July 2011, Lookout found four apps there that were infected with a variant of the “DroidDream Light” malware. The July discovery was the third instance of DroidDream-infected applications making it into Google’s e-store, following an initial campaign in March and a second in early June . Those two waves forced Google to pull more than 80 poisoned apps from its store.

Lookout uses its own malware detection technology to uncover malicious mobile apps. According to Halliday, Lookout detects rogue apps “as soon as they’re published.”

“Google is very responsive,” said Wyatt, referring to the Android maker’s moves when it’s told that tainted apps are in its marketplace. “From notification to pulling the apps is generally on the order of minutes,” Wyatt added.

Security experts have regularly knocked Google for not proactively scanning apps submitted to the Android Market, and repeated that criticism today.

“We have already stated several times that the requirements for becoming an Android developer that can publish apps to the Android market are far too relaxed,” said Vanja Svajcer, a principal virus researcher with U.K.-based antivirus vendor Sophos, in a Monday blog . “The attacks on Android Market will continue as long as the developer requirements stay too relaxed.”

Svajcer identified some of the fake games that the attackers used to spread RuFraud, a list that included “Angry Birds,” “Assassin’s Creed Revelations,” “Cut the Rope” and “Need for Speed.”

Unlike Google, other app store operators vet submissions and scan apps for possible malware. Microsoft, for example, has promised to review apps submitted to its PC- and tablet-oriented Windows Store for security issues; Microsoft’s market is slated for opening in late February alongside the release of the first Windows 8 public beta.

When asked if Lookout had offered Google the former’s technology for scanning apps submitted to the Android Market, Halliday declined to comment.

Gregg Keizer covers Microsoft, security issues, Apple, Web browsers and general technology breaking news for Computerworld. Follow Gregg on Twitter at @gkeizer , on Google+ or subscribe to Gregg’s RSS feed . His e-mail address is gkeizer@computerworld.com .

See more articles by Gregg Keizer .

Read more about security in Computerworld’s Security Topic Center.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/121211-google-pulls-22-more-malicious-254002.html?page=1

Google unveils ‘Find My Face’ tool for Google+

12 December 2011

Google dove into the realm of facial recognition on Thursday, unveiling a tagging suggestion feature for its Google+ social network.

Google launched Find My Face, a Google+ tool that’s designed to scan photos from users and their friends to find recognizable faces. Much like Facebook’s Photo Tag Suggest, the feature then suggests name tags by matching the faces with users’ profile photos or other tagged pictures on the site.

“Around the holidays, many of us get together with friends and family, and if you’re like me, you take lots of photos,” wrote Matt Steiner, leader of Google’s Photos group, in a Google+ post. “By turning on Find My Face, Google+ can prompt people you know to tag your face when it appears in photos. Of course, you have control over which tags you accept or reject, and you can turn the feature on or off in Google+ settings.”

The feature will be rolling out to Google+ users over the next few days.

Users seemed largely happy with the addition, according to the comments left on Steiner’s post.

“Nice! And I’m glad to see that it’s not opted in by default,” wrote Patrik Johansson.

“I think it is awesome,” said another, Mark Hamilton. “I am going to go turn it on to play with the new toys.”

Google+ rival Facebook generated some privacy controversy with its facial recognition tool, which was unveiled over the summer.

Some users and analysts were leery of the fact that Facebook, the world’s largest social networking site, could identify people simply by their face. And Facebook’s facial recognition feature is automatically turned on. Users who don’t want the service must manually opt out of it.

Just last month, Germany announced that it was launching legal action against Facebook over the photo-tagging feature.

The country’s laws require companies to alert users about how their own data is being used, but the German government said it had not been able to reach an agreement on the issue with Facebook.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon’s RSS feed. Her e-mail address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

Source:http://www.networkworld.com/news/2011/120911-google-unveils-find-my-face-253955.html