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| Facebook is trialling a new service that rifles through your snaps - and automatically tags them |
FACEBOOK is testing out a new technology to automatically tag your snaps – as soon as you taken them on your smartphone.
Facebook is testing a new service – dubbed Photo Magic – which rifles through your photos and tags your friends seconds after your have pressed the shutter on your camera.
Photo Magic is currently on trial in Australia and gives the social network unprecedented access to your photo library.
The hugely successful US social network believes its new photo service will help users find pictures of their friends faster.
The tool, which is set to be integrated into the Facebook Messenger app, can scan photos of your friends and instantly tag them using facial recognition technology.
Photo Magic appears fast, hassle-free and is sure to please serial Facebook users.
Unfortunately to speed-up the tagging process, Facebook has to use the facial recognition technology on its servers.
And the privacy implications get even worse on Android, which allows the social network to instantly scan your photograph for known faces the second it is taken.
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| The new technology could be baked into Facebook Messenger in future app updates |
If the Australian pilot is successful, it is thought Facebook will roll out the new service to the United States, before the rest of the world.
There's no official word from Facebook when you can expect to see the Photo Magic update drop on your smartphone.
Photo Magic can be disabled from within the Facebook Messenger settings menu, for those uncomfortable with the functionality.
The news comes hours after Facebook published a report which claimed Government demands for its user data surged in the first half of 2015.
Facebook's biannual report is one of the chief indicators of government interest in the company's data. The social media giant is generally not allowed to publicise specific requests by law enforcement and spy agencies.
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| The hugely successful US social network believes Photo Magic will make sharing photos faster |
Government requests for account data globally jumped 18 percent in the first half of 2015 to 41,214 accounts, up from 35,051 requests in the second half of 2014, Facebook said in the report posted on its website.
In the first half of this year, Facebook took down 20,568 posts and other pieces of content that violated local laws, more than doubling the number taken down in the second half of 2014.
Such restricted content includes anything from Nazi propaganda in Germany to depictions of violent crimes.
Facebook's user base has grown explosively to 1.55 billion people, up from 1.4 billion in the second half of last year.
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| Facebook's user base has grown explosively to 1.55 billion people this year |
The government often requests basic subscriber information, IP addresses or account content, including people's posts online.
The bulk of government requests came from U.S. law enforcement agencies. U.S. agencies requested data from 26,579 accounts - comprising more than 60 percent of requests globally - up from 21,731 accounts in the second half of 2014.
France, Germany and Britain also made up a large percentage of the requests and had far more content restricted in 2015. Some of the content taken down in Germany, for example, may relate to Holocaust denial, Facebook said.
"Facebook does not provide any government with 'back doors' or direct access to people's data," Facebook wrote.
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