Posts Tagged ‘privacy’

Why should I turn off facebook’s facial recognition?

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

I just turned off Facebook’s Facial Recognition software. You know what that is, right? It’s a new feature that uses facial recognition algorithms to identify users in photos and recommend those photos to other people so they can tag these images.

You may wonder, why anyone would bother to turn it off. It bugs me that facebook might see someone who looks like me doing something I might not do and tell my friends, “Hey– I think this is Steve!” I find it easy enough to get into trouble without being blamed for things that may be done by my evil twin! So I turned off the facial recognition feature.

How to turn off facebook facial recognition:

  1. Select “Account settings” from the drop-down “Account” menu in the upper right.
  2. Go to “Privacy” and select “Manage”.
  3. Click “Custom”
  4. Select “Customize settings.”
  5. Go to “Things others share.”
  6. Find “Suggest photos of me to friends” and click “Edit settings.”
  7. Turn the feature from “Enabled” to “Disabled”.
  8. Click OK and you’re done.

Facebook makes many things easy. Privacy is not one of them.