I just read this article on Fast Company’s site. Technology continues to advance at a dizzying pace and now face recognition on Facebook is another development.  While there is benefit to being alerted when Facebook thinks a picture of yo

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

u has been uploaded, there’s the other side of the coin about the aggregation of information.

The below article has some good recommendations about reviewing your settings. Check out your settings and be sure you know what each one means. And if you have kids on Facebook, you may want to review their settings.

David

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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:

Things you share

Check this list, which starts with “Posts by me” and ends with “Places you check in to” and verify that the status is “Friends only,” which is as tight as you can set these (although you can customize the settings to prevent particular friends from accessing each of the shred items on a granular level). Disable the “Include me in ‘People here now’ after I check in” button to make sure you don’t appear associated with a Facebook Place.

Then click through to “Edit privacy settings for existing photos and videos” to double check you’re not sharing pics and videos with everyone–I found that I had been, even though I wasn’t aware of the fact, so it’s worth a check.

Things others share

Same trick here for the shorter list that starts with “Photos and videos you’re tagged in,” ends with “Friends can check me in to places” and includes the new Face Recognition trick. All of these can be restricted to Friends only, and you may want to pay attention to the “Friends can check me in…” button if you’re protective of your location data. If you like, you can lock your wall so friends can’t write on it.

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Related articles

• Face Recognition and the Different Meanings of Facebook Privacy Settings (aleksandreia.wordpress.com)
• Face Recognition: Creepy or Cool? (thenextweb.com)
• EU regulators scrutinize Facebook’s facial recognition feature (arstechnica.com)