As you may be aware, I’m not very happy with the current version of Windows Live Photo Gallery at the moment. I believe strongly that it has problems that desperately need to be fixed.
There are other, less pressing, issues with WLPG 2011 as well. These include the fact that slideshow quality is degraded in comparison to earlier versions. Another is the fact that people are finding that their workflow performance has taken a nose-dive since upgrading to WLPG 2011.
However, apart from all that, there are other things that niggle. These days most people are unaware of how much of their identity is available online. That almost certainly includes me, even though I think I’m being careful. Thus, here’s another example from WLPG 2011. It has automatic face recognition in it. People are probably happily tagging (identifying) their friends in photos using WLPG 2011, which in turn is squirreling away metadata containing this information into the photos. If these photos are subsequently uploaded to online sites where they can be viewed by anyone, then this metadata is often equally available to all.
And what is this metadata? Well, it is at minimum, the names of the people in the photos. But if those people are also known to you as email contacts, or have a Windows Live identity, then this information is also included as metadata in the uploaded photos. True, the metadata will not spell out their email addresses for all to see – they are at least encrypted. However, after reading this comment, (from a Microsoft employee) I do wonder about the Windows Live ID:
PersonLiveCID is the unique ID generated for everyone with a Windows Live ID, it might be possible to use this and I’ll be playing with some of the Azure Services sometime to see if you can resolve this to a contact. That could create some very interesting possibilities.
That would be “interesting” in the Chinese sense, I think.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 
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