2024-09-24 19:26:21
A few years ago, Facebook had a feature (disabled by default) that would notify users when one of their friends (or anyone else) posted a photo of them. Thanks to this feature, many people could find out if a contact had uploaded a photo of themselves and hadn’t tagged them, and they could even find out if a stranger had used the image without permission to create a fake profile.
Facebook disables facial recognition
Unfortunately, the ‘facial recognition’ option was removed from Facebook a few years ago. This is because, in 2020, the company founded by Mark Zuckerberg was forced to pay compensation of 650 million dollars to a group of users who filed a class action lawsuit, in which they claimed that the American company had stored their faces without permission.
“People who opted in to this feature will no longer be automatically recognized in photos and videos, and we will remove facial recognition templates for over 1 billion users. This is one of the biggest changes to the use of facial recognition in the history of the technology industry,” said Jerome Pesenti, Vice President of AI at Meta.
The executive stressed that this facial recognition technology was very important for millions of users, especially for those who suffer from visual impairment, as it allowed them to identify their friends in images. Furthermore, this feature had been included because it was a way to avoid identity theft on the social network.
What tools can you use to find out if your photos are being used without permission?
Currently, the facial recognition feature is not available on Facebook, so it is impossible to find out if a friend (or a stranger) has uploaded a photo of you. Fortunately, there is a tool that will help you find out if your profile picture or any other image belonging to you has been uploaded to the Internet without your consent.
The name of this platform is TinEye and it allows us to upload our Facebook profile picture (or any other image) to find out how many pages it has been uploaded to. It is worth noting that it will not only show you the links (if there are any) but it will also reveal important information, such as the exact date (day, month and year) that the photo was posted.