Millions of people's private photos have been leveraged by the cloud photo service, Ever, to develop and sell facial recognition software without their consent says an exclusive report by NBC News.
According to the report, Ever, which started in 2013 as a cloud-based app for storing and sharing photos, has recently started to pivot into a burgeoning field of facial recognition technology through its new arm, Ever AI.
In order to train its software, which according to the company's web page, is capable of delivering 'surveillance & monitoring, physical access control, and digital authentication,' it used the personal photos from its millions of its users without informing them first.
Millions of peoples private photos have been leveraged by the cloud photo service, Ever, to develop and sell facial recognition software without their consent says an exclusive report by NBC News
According to the privacy policy and a statement from CEO of Ever, Doug Aley, the company does not distribute users' photos to third parties, but does use them to instruct its algorithm.
Specifically, it leverages a facial recognition feature built into the Ever service which allows users to group photos of the same people by scanning their face.
As noted by NBC News, the language regarding its use of photos for facial recognition was added to its privacy policy on April 15 after an inquiry from reporters.
According to Joseph Jerome, a Policy Counsel for the Privacy and Data Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology, a nonprofit, questions about Ever's policy toward facial recognition is an ethical one.
'I would not frame this as a breach of Ever users' privacy, but rather an ethical question of what companies should do with sensitive data and how they inform individuals about that,' Jerome told Dailymail.com.
'The reality is that Ever Album users likely had no way of knowing their data was being used to improve technologies that could be a tool of surveillance, and if you told people that straight-up, many would probably be very uncomfortable with that sort of use.'
Though Aley told NBC News that Ever has not received any complaints about its policies, some users of the service interviewed by Dailymail.com were unaware that their photos were being used for its facial recognition software.
'I’ve been using ever album for about five, almost 6 years now, and I was never made aware of any of that,' said Ever user Caymi Studnicka via Twitter direct message.
'I have a lot of fun memories saved on that app but also a lot of personal things, like pictures of my medical records and pictures of surgical wounds from past medical procedures that I’ve kept on there specifically for insurance.'
Users were unaware of the company's use and some took exception when they found out that parts of their life had been used without their consent by the company
