The social networking site Facebook has a history of adding new features that can potentially have a negative impact on your online privacy, and the company’s latest addition — facial recognition that suggests photos of you for friends to tag — is no different. Unless you know where to look to disable automatic facial recognition, you can’t shut it off, and you may not even realize your face is being served up to people without your knowledge.
If you want to disable Facebook’s automatic facial recognition feature, do this:
- Log into your Facebook account in a Web browser
- Click
Account
(It’s in the upper right corner of the Facebook page) - Choose
Privacy Settings
- Click
Customize settings
(It’s at the bottom of theSharing on Facebook
section) - Click
Edit Settings
next toSuggest photos of me to friends
(It’s in theThings others share
section) - Set
Suggest Photos of Me to Friends
toDisabled
- Click
Okay
Don’t want your face getting around? Disable Facebook’s automatic face recognition.
Disabling automatic facial recognition will stop Facebook from combing through user’s accounts for photos of you, but it won’t stop someone from manually tagging your face in a photo. You should, however, get a notification should someone tag you in a photo so you have a chance to un-tag yourself and help keep at least a modicum of online privacy.