You Can Now Tell Facebook to Delete Its Internal Record of Your Face
A new feature allows Facebook users to opt out of facial recognition on the social network
Facebook users can now tell the company not to run facial recognition on their pictures.
The company announced Tuesday that it has added a setting for opting out of certain face recognition features that have raised privacy concerns. If you disable face recognition, Facebook won't automatically tag you in images, nor will it automatically suggest tags of your friends. Opting out will also stop Facebook from searching for you in other images on the site using its Photo Review feature — which is designed to notify you when someone uploads a picture of you that you aren't tagged in, perhaps so that you can flag impersonation or other problems.
The update will also have a significant impact on the underlying technology that allows Facebook to recognize you in the first place, the company told OneZero. Facebook processes images to extract what your face looks like into a hidden string of numbers called a template, according to the company's website. Fundamentally, facial recognition is just comparing how statistically similar your string of numbers is to other strings of numbers extracted from other images, using criteria like the distance and orientation of facial features learned by an algorithm.
When you opt out of facial recognition on Facebook, the company will delete your template, meaning it will have no original reference point for your face and therefore cannot find your face at all. It's an assurance that Facebook isn't actually retaining data that it could use again someday to recognize your face. Of course, Facebook could compute that template again if you opt back in. And your friends can still manually tag you in an image, though doing so won't lead Facebook to compute a new template for your face.
[. . . .] Opting out also prohibits you from being included in Facebook's facial recognition research, according to a Facebook spokesperson.
"When people turn off their face recognition setting, we can no longer create a face template for them for any purpose, including A.I. research," the spokesperson told OneZero.
FB can add your face to a list of deleted faces to guarantee they don't have it any longer.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by hemocyanin on Saturday September 07 2019, @01:26AM (3 children)
Can non Facebook users opt out?
(I don't really know FB has it set up -- can users name other people in photos? If so the major problem here is that non-users are not protected. That would not be the case if face recognition was opt IN).
(Score: 5, Insightful) by black6host on Saturday September 07 2019, @01:32AM (2 children)
I have never signed up for Facebook and I don't let people take pictures of me unless they promise not to upload them to Facebook. Yeah, I can't stop them but the few that do take pics are people I trust. Still, I'm sure Facebook has my pic and some sort of name. You just can't get away from this shit anymore and it sucks.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @04:26AM
The shadow profiles especially should be illegal, but they are rarely talked about. All this mass surveillance, whether done by corporations or governments, poses a serious threat to privacy and democracy.
(Score: 2) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:11AM
Hm, almost like they have the planet 'totally' covered.
The other AC comment says this is a threat to democracy, a trope we have all heard.
I believe we need at this point to change this phrase to the more accurate 'Threat of totalitarianism.'
They get everyone in the nice fun candy crush chat with your friends system, then at the top that system is gradually overtaken by smaller and smaller pyramidal power structures until we are at the point where a single person can single out any other person and drone strike them on demand, for the rest of human history.
That is the system they are building whether or not they admit it and it is not a threat to democracy, it is the elimination of it completly. The word, the concept, the thought, the memory, totally erased in any real sense.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by aristarchus on Saturday September 07 2019, @01:43AM (7 children)
Before they can remove all the facial recog, you have to positively identify the images as being your face. Isn't that what they were trying to do all along? And then,
Add your face to the list of faces that they do not have pics of, with a pic for reference only, to be sure it is "deleted". How gullible would you have to be to fall for this? Just like those nice spam messages that say, "click here to be removed from our mailing list", but actually mean "we got a live one!". Yes, it's a trap, Soylentils!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by jmichaelhudsondotnet on Saturday September 07 2019, @07:57AM (1 child)
Every police, military and spy agency in the world cares *primarily* about the people who are avoiding being tracked.
The people who are not basically fail an IQ test that demonstrate they are in an evolutionary stage that only minimally alters its environment.
Anyone who trusts fb at this point to do such a thing, truly, is failing the test twice. For trust to be actual, it has to also be something that can be lost due to untrustworthy behavior. If facegag hasn't acted untrustworthy, then I have to disregard your entire semantical framework and observed universe for my own sanity.
"there is a way to avoid being tracked that requires sending an identified photo to fb' - roflmao
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 08 2019, @02:30PM
yeah .... so as soon as you get a driver's license or a passport, then what?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:41AM (4 children)
Except that Facebook haven't said this, DannyB did. It is, perhaps, a touch of lightheartedness, but that doesn't make it true.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @10:38PM (3 children)
It doesn't make it false either. Come now, janrinok. I think just about everyone is aware that what FB promises and what they do are frequently rather different things.
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday September 08 2019, @04:18AM (2 children)
I agree - FB does enough bad things that we do not have to make things up. So why not just be honest and discuss what actually happened and was said, rather than make up sensational claims that are untrue?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday September 08 2019, @06:33AM (1 child)
FB has lied many times before, particularly when it comes to privacy issues. Whether or not this is true is yet to be seen. But if I were a betting man, I would put my money on them being mendacious little weasels...again!
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Sunday September 08 2019, @08:03AM
I have already said - I AGREE!
But claiming that things were said when they weren't is simply being dishonest and, as we both have agreed, completely unnecessary.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:27AM (1 child)
A post got retracted?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:43AM
Not that I am aware of - what makes you think that it has just happened?
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Saturday September 07 2019, @02:41AM (3 children)
I'm sure you can trust Zuckerberg...he'd NEVER do anything bad, or illegal, or immoral, or wrong, or evil, or
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Saturday September 07 2019, @04:45AM (1 child)
Well for one, how about: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/jan/17/mark-zuckerberg-hawaii-estate-kauai-land-rights-dispute [theguardian.com]
Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts"- --Daniel Patrick Moynihan--
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @11:12PM
"Rapozo" doesn't sound very Hawaiian to me - the ancestor was probably a rich immigrant who dispossessed the incumbent natives.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:02AM
Your absolutely wrong, he'll do or if you let him.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Saturday September 07 2019, @07:14AM
Think they're gonna do it?
There is no "opt-out".
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @08:16AM
I have a small proposal. Generally every time there's an e-mail address whose user doesn't agree for data processing, irl address, surname, or photo whose user gets opt-out (however sending photo or making account on FB only for such purpose looks like totally mortgaging oneself to guarantee that in case of identity theft nobody will take another debt) but all of them are stored in a format in which after a leak it''s in plain sight. And FB leaks, it's their business model.
So why the hell there is no single-direction function used for it like ones used for hashing? In many countries such databases of service opt-out could be even made on a national level.
Someone just wants this data.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 07 2019, @05:25PM
just like the deleting account scam they run.