How are we using facial recognition technology to protect you from scams that use your image?
Scammers often use the images of public figures and high profile individuals to bait people into engaging with scams. These types of scams, such as when bad actors post “celeb-bait” ads or try to deceive users through impersonating Pages or Profiles, violate our policies and are bad for our community.
We conduct face analysis through different methods, including through facial recognition technology, or in some instances, a manual review by a person to determine if images are being misused in scam ads.
To help reduce scams that misuse images, Meta is using facial recognition technology as a method of face analysis. Facial recognition technology is automated processing that uses your Facebook and instagram profile photos, as well as previous Facebook profile photos, and photos you have uploaded to your profile to create an “embedding.” An embedding is a numerical value representing the visual characteristics of your face.
The embeddings that we generate may be considered biometric data in some jurisdictions and we will obtain your consent where required. These are used to help check if your image is being misused in scams and to help ensure that our scam detection system works as intended. The aim of this is to be able to detect and stop these scams faster and more accurately.
How this works
- When we use facial recognition technology, we will use an automated system to create an embedding from your profile photos and the photos you have uploaded to your Facebook and Instagram profiles. To take advantage of this technology, we suggest that you have at least one photo of just yourself. We then compare those embeddings against images in potential scam content, such as images in possible celeb-bait ads, to confirm if the faces belong to the same person.
- If the system detects a match, we will check to confirm if your image is being misused to scam people. If we confirm that your image is being misused to scam people, we will take action by removing violating content or Pages and Profiles.
- If you choose to delete the photos on your Facebook or Instagram profile from which we generated embeddings, or if you become ineligible for the use of this technology for any reason, we will delete the associated embeddings. We will regenerate embeddings every 12 months, unless they have been deleted already. We don’t use the embeddings for anything other than helping ensure the effective detection of scams.
- Where an embedding has not been deleted we will retain it for 12 months. After 12 months we will discard that embedding and regenerate a new embedding from the same photo. We will repeat this regeneration process every 12 months. We don’t use the embeddings for anything other than helping ensure the effective detection of scams.
- In limited circumstances, we may incidentally and temporarily process other people’s images when trying to detect if your images are being misused. This is necessary for us to detect these types of scams. We don’t store this data.
What happens if you choose not to use facial recognition technology
- If you later choose not to use facial recognition technology, the embeddings generated from your profile photos are deleted. It means that we won’t be able to use facial recognition technology to actively detect if your image is being misused in potential scam content.
You can manage this permission at any time in the Accounts Center by navigating to Your information and permissions and then Facial recognition technology. Your permission applies to any Facebook and Instagram accounts in the same Accounts Center.
Facebook Page owners or authorized admins can manage this permission by logging into their Page and navigating to Settings & privacy and then Facial recognition technology.
You can learn more about how our use of facial recognition technology affects people other than public figures and high-profile individuals here.