Spiria logo.

Facebook enhancing its use of facial recognition

December 19, 2017.

Facial recognition.

© iStock.

Facebook is beefing up its use of facial recognition technology, and will now alert you if a friend, or a friend of a friend, uploads a picture with you in it, even if you weren’t tagged in the photo. If you aren’t OK with the publication of that photo, you’ll be able to hide it. If someone uploads a photo of you as his or her profile pic, Facebook will also notify you. “We’re doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook,” the company wrote on its blog. This being said, everyone using Facebook will be able to request to not be identified visually. Facebook could also use a method of account recovery that will use facial recognition to check that you’re the legitimate account holder. Unfortunately for some of us, though, facial recognition is not supported by Facebook in Canada or in the European Union, where laws about protection of personal information and privacy are more stringent than elsewhere.

Recode, “Facebook will use facial recognition to tell you when people upload your picture.”