25 February 2013

The English High Court ruled last month that a person has a right to expect that certain photos taken of them — even after uploaded onto Facebook — will be kept private.

At first, this decision sounds surprising. Traditional wisdom has generally been that if it’s on the internet, it’s not private. However, when considering that Facebook has a billion active users who will upload two million photos while you’re reading this article and another 100 billion photos before the year is out, it begins to make more sense.

With the current generation of full-time mobile phone photographers, you and your family probably appear somewhere on the vast collective timeline of Facebook whether you know it or not, begging the question: what if I don’t want my photo on Facebook?…

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