Facebook Photo Sync App Could Be Privacy Nightmare: Do You Want All Your Photos Online?

Facebook is pushing out its new Photo Sync feature, aggressively advertising it at the top of users' News Feeds. The new feature, which automatically uploads new photos from a Facebook user's camera to a private folder in their Facebook account, is undoubtedly easy to use. But is it a good idea?

Fortunately, users need to opt-in for Photo Sync to start working. That means that those who don't want to use the feature don't have to do anything to avoid it.

But it is deceptively easy to turn on. The pop-up prompt suggests users "Get Started," and it's a simple thing to unknowingly activate.

Once on, Photo Sync automatically grabs every photo taken by a user's smartphone and, using the phone's data connection, uploads those photos to a new, private photo album.

Facebook's facial recognition software also pre-tags faces in those photos, waiting for approval before definitively stamping those tags.

This is a goldmine of new data for Facebook. Even if users keep their new photos private, Facebook algorithms can still catalog geocached data, figuring out where those photos were taken, and targeting more specific ads to users.

This is better for Facebook's bottom line, and it's better for Facebook users who appreciate more specific advertisements. But for privacy advocates, it looks like yet another way to sell private information to a mostly unsuspecting public.

And of course, there are downsides. Photo Sync can't tell which photos are good and which are bad. It uploads every photo, including the ones where everyone is blinking, or the flash didn't go off, or everything's out of focus. It uploads naked photos.

And while the photos are private, no one with any modicum of sense completely trusts Facebook's privacy settings. It's pretty much guaranteed that somebody somewhere will accidentally share pictures they didn't even know they'd uploaded.

On top of that, there's a whole lot of data that will be streaming off smartphones, many of which are on limited data plans. While Facebook says Photo Sync uploads smaller versions of pictures when a data plan is being used, it'll still add up.

Some people may really like the convenience of never having to upload photos from a camera again. But services like Dropbox can already do this, and they're not trying to sell your demographic data to advertisers.

Facebook will probably rope in at least 300 million people to Photo Sync, just from its News Feed advertisement. Make sure you really want to be one of them before you sign up.