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Assuming you haven’t completely erased Facebook from your life and have instead chosen to carefully inspect your privacy settings and limit what Facebook has on you, I’m going to offer another piece of optional advice. If you’re generally distrustful of the social network, you might want to think about disabling the company’s face recognition technology. Facebook has been using face recognition for years to make suggestions of who should be tagged in photos you share. But now it’s using those capabilities in new ways. Let’s examine what they are, and you can decide for yourself whether you want Facebook to keep looking for your mug.

How does Facebook’s face recognition work?

It’s probably best to just let Facebook explain it:

Our technology analyzes the pixels in photos you’re already tagged in and generates a string of numbers we call a template. When photos and videos are uploaded to our systems, we compare those images to the template.

When you disable face recognition, Facebook says it deletes your template.

When does Facebook use face recognition?

It’s used for suggesting tags in photos uploaded by your friends and family. The core objective of face recognition is to make it easier for people to quickly select you when they’re sharing photos on the app or website. Simplified tagging leads to you liking the photos or commenting on the photos, and Facebook loves nothing more than user engagement. When friends share images including you, face recognition will suggest you at the top of the tag results when there’s a likely match. But turning face recognition off in no way prevents you from being tagged in shots; people can always just search for your name.

The core objective of face recognition is to make it easier for people to quickly select you when they’re sharing photos on the app or website. Simplified tagging leads to you liking the photos or commenting on the photos, and Facebook loves nothing more than user engagement. When friends share images including you, face recognition will suggest you at the top of the tag results when there’s a likely match. But turning face recognition off in no way prevents you from being tagged in shots; people can always just search for your name. NEW: It’s used to let you know when you’re in a photo — even when you haven’t been tagged. If you’re in the audience for a post that includes a photo of you, Facebook now sends a notification when it successfully identifies your face and tips you off to images that “might include you.” When that happens, you can choose to add a tag, remain untagged (thus keeping the image off your timeline), or message the uploader.

If you’re in the audience for a post that includes a photo of you, Facebook now sends a notification when it successfully identifies your face and tips you off to images that “might include you.” When that happens, you can choose to add a tag, remain untagged (thus keeping the image off your timeline), or message the uploader. NEW: It alerts you if someone uses a picture of you as their profile photo. In an attempt to prevent impersonation and spam accounts on the platform, Facebook is using face recognition to tell you if it detects another profile that’s got your face as the main photo.

In an attempt to prevent impersonation and spam accounts on the platform, Facebook is using face recognition to tell you if it detects another profile that’s got your face as the main photo. NEW: Face recognition helps people with visual impairments know who’s in a photo. Facebook says face recognition can help with accessibility and give a fuller idea of who’s in a given shot. “People who use screen readers will know who appears in photos in their News Feed even if people aren’t tagged.” Pretty helpful. But again, there’s nothing stopping people from tagging you the old-fashioned way, and those tags would also appear for screen readers.

Here’s what it looks like when you get a face recognition notification:

To Facebook’s credit, the company has tried to be very upfront about this expanded use of face recognition. You might’ve already gotten a prompt that explains the added ways that Facebook is utilizing it of late.

What are the downsides of turning it off?

Facebook won’t tell you about photos that you’re in unless you’ve been tagged. With face recognition enabled, Facebook will notify you whenever it thinks it’s found you in a newly uploaded image. This only works for posts that include you in the audience, so it’s good for public posts or people on your own friends list. But if it’s a complete stranger who set their post to friends-only, face recognition isn’t going to be good for much.

With face recognition enabled, Facebook will notify you whenever it thinks it’s found you in a newly uploaded image. This only works for posts that include you in the audience, so it’s good for public posts or people on your own friends list. But if it’s a complete stranger who set their post to friends-only, face recognition isn’t going to be good for much. You won’t be notified if someone makes a new Facebook profile that includes you in the profile photo. Maybe this isn’t something that’s of much concern to you (or most people), but in a world of Russian bot armies, a heads-up when your image has been stolen is a nice thing.

Okay, I don’t want this enabled anymore. How do I turn it off?

On your phone, go to your own profile page, then tap the “More” icon — a circle with three dots in the middle. From there, choose “More Settings” and then finally tap on Face Recognition. Make sure “Do you want Facebook to be able to recognize you in photos and videos?” is set to no. Facebook claims it’s honoring previous user privacy preferences here; if you’ve already turned off tag suggestions at some point, face recognition should theoretically be disabled when you check this setting. And if you had the tagging thing on, Facebook thinks you’re fine with the new ways it’s putting face recognition to use.

Can I leave face recognition enabled for photo tag suggestions but turn off the other stuff?

No. It’s all or nothing. Facebook says users prefer a simplified, single switch to control all face recognition settings.