Facebook is at it again. Adding a service, hiding it away, and making it confusing to turn off.
The Newest Service – Facial Recognition
Facebook has created and rolled out a facial recognition service. As usual, it is my pleasure to tell you how to turn this so-called tool off. Here’s how.
Note, if you previously turned off the ability “Suggest photos of me to friends” then the service is most likely already disabled. You should still check.
Here is the process.
1. Go to Account then go to Privacy Settings
2. Scroll down to Customize Settings
3. Scroll down to Things Others Share
The third option is Suggest Photos of Me to Friends. Underneath this option it now reads “When photos look like me, suggest my name”
4. Click on Edit Settings
5. The setting will read Enabled or Disabled. If it reads Enabled click on it and change it to disabled.
Remember!
You cannot turn facial recognition itself off. You can only turn off the ability of Facebook to identify you as the person in a picture. I see no evidence that turning off the ability for Facebook to identify you in a friend’s picture actually turns the facial recognition feature completely off. In other words, Facebook is still scanning and identifying pictures, at least as far as I can tell. It just isn’t sharing the information with your friends.
For more information on facial recognition from Facebook, see its post on “Making Photo Tagging Easier.”