Facebook looks to Microsoft technology to combat child porn

Social networking giant Facebook has teamed up with Microsoft, using the software giant’s technology to combat child pornography that has been shared via its service. Previously, Microsoft was generous enough to donate an image-matching technology called PhotoDNA to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) for it to work alongside online services such as Facebook in order to prevent the distribution of images that depict children being raped as well as other despicable acts.

Ernie Allen, president and CEO of NCMEC said, “I’m proud to say that Facebook – a company that has revolutionized life online and, among other accomplishments, is one of the leading photo-sharing services in the world – will implement PhotoDNA on its network to further its commitment to keeping children from being victimized.”

Other places that saw PhotoDNA implemented would be Microsoft’s own search engine Bing, file hosting service SkyDrive, and e-mail service Hotmail. It seems that PhotoDNA is touted to have a rate of zero false positives since as it depends on signatures provided by NCMEC, which draws its information from known child pornography. With Facebook’s participation, it will expand the program’s impact by a fair bit, considering how Facebook has billions of image files stored there.

What other online services do you think will use PhotoDNA in the future? It is free, after all.