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Facebook Will Use Facial Recognition To Tell You When People Upload Your Picture (recode.net)

Posted by msmash on from the next-up dept.

If someone uploads a photo of your face to Facebook, the company usually knows that it's you thanks to facial recognition technology. Now Facebook won't just know it's you -- it'll tell you about the photo, too. From a report: Facebook is expanding its use of facial recognition technology and will now alert people that a friend, or a friend of a friend, uploaded a photo of them, even if they haven't been tagged in the picture. If anyone uploads a profile picture that includes your face, Facebook will alert you of that, too. "We're doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook," the company wrote on its blog Tuesday.

10 of 80 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Effective as? by JaredOfEuropa · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Those can be useful too.

    FB: Someone uploaded this picture of you.
    You: That's not me.

    FB: Someone uploaded this picture of you.
    You: [ silence ].
    FB: Thank youuuu.

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    If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
  2. Oh no you're not... by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We're doing this to prevent people from impersonating others on Facebook,

    That's a lie Facebook. You're doing it so that you can track people better. See if they have multiple accounts. Track who really knows who and who has been where. Etc.

    You're facemapping people so you can collect more data to sell. Don't tell porkies and claim it's to prevent impersonation. It's not. It's really not and we're not all stupid. You may "tack on" that functionality to make it sound more palatable, but you're really just being a big creepy stalker.

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    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    1. Re:Oh no you're not... by GregMmm · · Score: 3, Informative

      Just one more reason not to be on Facebook...

    2. Re:Oh no you're not... by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 2

      "Just one more reason not to be on Facebook..."

      Actually you got that wrong.
      If you're not on FB, you'll never get a notice that people who _are_ on FB are posting pictures of you.

      It's a ploy to get all the paranoid people onto FB or at least 1 picture of them.

      If someone wants to pretend to be a slightly overweight guy with yellowing teeth from excess coffee consumption, they're welcome to use my photos! (which they won't find because I'm not on facebook.)

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      "That's the way to do it" - Punch
    3. Re:Oh no you're not... by Baron_Yam · · Score: 3, Informative

      >my photos! (which they won't find because I'm not on facebook)

      You probably are. Someone else uploads a picture with you in it, your face gets tagged, then it gets linked to the shadow profile of you they already have. Maybe it's an out of date photo - an old school class photo or something.

      It's extremely evil from a privacy perspective and there is no will in the USA to do anything about it.

  3. Re:Doppelgangers? by Oswald+McWeany · · Score: 4, Funny

    I can't wait until I get notified by my doppelganger, who is a porn star. It's caused quite a bit of embarrassment when co-workers ask if that's me in the skin mags.

    Marty Feldman is not a porn star.

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    "That's the way to do it" - Punch
  4. Facebook, die, die, die by Rick+Schumann · · Score: 2

    Seriously: when are you all going to say 'enough is enough' and stop using Facebook?

  5. Must be a boon to law enforcement by John+Jorsett · · Score: 2

    How long (or maybe it's happening already) before law enforcement dragoons Facebook into watching for people of interest and letting them know that a picture of any of those folks has just shown up, who posted it, metadata, etc.? This sounds way easier for the cops than setting up their own surveillance and face recognition systems.

    1. Re:Must be a boon to law enforcement by Baron_Yam · · Score: 2

      > This sounds way easier for the cops than setting up their own surveillance and face recognition systems

      Easier but not necessarily more effective. By building a federal law enforcement system they can do things like require municipal CCTV systems to do local scanning and forwarding of results as well. And airports, bus stations, customs, maybe major malls or amusement parks, maybe cameras at critical choke points on interstate highways, etc.. Then the feds let local law enforcement query against that system while keeping the data under their control.

      After that, they get a law passed (probably a secret order with a gag order bonus) to force entities like Facebook to provide a feed as well, the icing on the Big Brother cake.

      At least, that's how I'd do it.

  6. Unless you're Asian or Black by WillAffleckUW · · Score: 2

    Admittedly, most facial recognition software has a very high failure rate for non-Caucasian subjects.

    Don't believe me? Try seeing if your iPhone X can figure out the difference, or Facebook software. Dress two people with similar facial looks up with the same hairstyle and clothes and: Voila!

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