Facebook seems to be forever pushing the boundaries of what “online privacy” means. Today we see the latest iteration of this–Face Recognition.
By adjusting its interface, Facebook has now enabled “tag suggestions” to many more of its users around the world, which means your friends will get an alert if someone uploads a photo that Facebook thinks contains your image. They’ll be invited to tag it, and then your ID’s associated with that image. Sounds neat in some ways, and there are a few privacy nods thrown in–Facebook notes that only friends can tag you, you’ll get notified of the tag, you can remove tags and so on. But the system is actually turned on by default–which is Facebook’s privacy boundary creep in action. Here’s how to turn it off, with a reminder of how to enable other privacy measures.
Face Recognition
Under the “Account” drop-down menu at the top-right of Facebook’s title bar, click “Privacy settings.” On the bottom half of the next window, under “Sharing on Facebook” click “Custom.” Then at the bottom, click on the little blue pencil and its “customize settings label.” In the next window scroll down to the “Things others share” section and the third list item, “Suggest photos of me to friends.” Click on the “Edit Settings” button, and scan to the middle right of the new pop-up window, which has little pics of your friends to remind you how friendly Facebook is. See the facility is enabled? Click on this button, select “Disabled.” And then click on “OK” to make the pop-up go away.
Easy, wasn’t it? Just nine click/scroll maneuvers required to burrow through multiple layers of windows.
While you’re there on the privacy page, check a few other things too:
