Privacy Concerns Will Keep Facebook Moments Out Of Europe

Facebook recently launched a new app called Moments that lets users share pictures privates with people they want to. The app will also help out in organizing photos on the user’s device and then allow them to share those photos privately with friends and family. The app has been released for both iOS and Android but it’s limited to select markets because due to privacy concerns it has not been released in Europe.

Facebook Moments uses facial recognition technology to automatically identify people and group together images based on who is in those photos.

Now that might sound like a good feature but that’s the biggest reason why this app is being kept out of Europe, it’s because of privacy concerns related to its facial recognition technology.

Facebook’s head of policy in Europe, Richard Allan, tells WSJ that the company has been told by regulators that it has to offer an opt-in choice to people who download the app and since there’s no opt-in mechanism in the app it is not being offered in Europe for now.

Moments may go live in Europe at some point in the future when Facebook developers and integrates that opt-in mechanism inside the application but until that happens users in Europe should look elsewhere for private photo sharing. Allan told the scribe that the company has no fixed timetable for creating this mechanism, so who knows how much time this is going to take.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: Cellphones
Tags: Apps, Facebook