Earlier this year we mentioned that Google was rolling out face recognition technology that would allow someone to pull up your personal information just by taking your picture. Now Facebook has launched their own facial recognition privacy nightmare, which “uses a comparison of photos you’re tagged in to suggest that friends tag you in new photos.” In other words, when one of your Facebook friends uploads a photo, and Facebook’s software recognizes you in that image, Facebook automatically suggests that your friend tag you in the photograph. The “feature” goes by “Suggest photos of me to friends”, and is also known as “Photos: Suggest Tags”. And the kicker is, Facebook has quietly enabled this for you – it is running now! So here’s how to turn it off!

How would you like to be able to download everything you have ever posted to Facebook – all your photos, all your videos, all your status updates – along with all the posts to your wall, and even your list of friends – all at one fell swoop, in one file, that you can store on your computer? Well now you can! Here’s how. (Amusingly, the domain from which you will download your big zip file is, wait for it, “bigzipfiles.facebook.com”.)

You’ve heard of the neighborhood crime watch? That’s where the citizens of a neighborhood keep their eyes open for crimes in progress and report them to the police. Well, the police department in the town of Evesham, New Jersey, has turned this idea on its head. They are instead informing the local citizenry of people who have been accused of crimes. They are doing it by posting names and mugshots and other photos of suspects on Facebook! And these aren’t just suspects who have been booked – they are even posting pictures taken before a suspect has even been arrested (let alone charged).

By now everyone knows the story: Last week a person who was supposedly Apple engineer Gray Powell supposedly lost what was supposedly an iPhone 4G prototype, in a bar in Redwood City, California (a mere stone’s throw from Apple’s Cupertino headquarters). Then a third-party supposedly found the alleged iPhone 4G test model, and then somehow it got to Gizmodo, where they tested it, disassembled it, pronounced it the real deal, and blogged about it, complete with pictures. Now Apple has sent a demand letter, demanding the unit back. This proves that the story, and the phone, are real. Or does it?

We’ve been telling people for years not to put pictures of your children up online on the Internet. Nobody ever believes us that perfect strangers will not only find those pictures, but do inappropriate things with them. Now here’s a real-life example of this happening. In the instant case, Danielle and Jeff Smith are lucky that “all” that was done with the picture of their children is that it was blown up bigger than lifesize and used in an advertisement half-way around the world.

As early as 2007, Facebook began quietly censoring pictures of breastfeeding babies which members had posted to their Facebook profiles. They did this by simply removing the pictures of the nursing babies after they were posted. In some cases, users were warned if they continued posting such “obscene” content, they stood to lose their Facebook accounts. Now the issue is heating up, and Facebook is not backing down. Facebook – you win the booby prize.

The rise in social media sites such as Facebook and Myspace has been a boon for prosecutors, who are finding incriminating pictures on such sites – pictures which have been admitted as evidence in court, and used to increase penalties, sentences, and prison time!