Meta Brings Back Facial Recognition Technology to Fight Fraud and Account Hacking
Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has announced that it is reusing facial recognition tools, as it is currently testing new technologies that could help users quickly recover their hacked accounts, and combat fraudulent ads that use the faces of celebrities in a false manner.
The company explained that these new tools will be able to scan users' faces to verify their identities by comparing them to their profile pictures on Facebook and Instagram. This step aims to protect celebrities and ordinary people from fake ads that impersonate them to deceive users and direct them to fraudulent sites.
Meta currently uses AI to detect content that violates its policies, but fake ads targeting celebrities are sometimes difficult to distinguish from real ones.
In this context, the company stated: “If our system suspects that an ad may be fraudulent and contains an image of a public figure, we will use facial recognition technology to compare the faces in the ad with profile photos on Facebook and Instagram. If we verify a match and that the ad is fraudulent, we will block it.”
These tools require celebrities to have a Facebook or Instagram account to take advantage of the facial recognition technology, and these tools have shown promising results in terms of speed and efficiency in detecting fake ads during initial tests with a small group of public figures, according to Meta.
More celebrities affected by these fake ads are expected to be automatically added in the coming weeks, with the option to opt out of the service if they wish.
Additionally, facial recognition tools will enable Facebook and Instagram users to recover their locked or hacked accounts by sending a selfie video, similar to verification systems like Apple’s Face ID.
Although the company has not set an exact date for launching this feature, Meta's head of global affairs, Nick Clegg, confirmed that the experiments have started on a small scale, with plans to expand them in the coming months.
Meta confirmed that the personal “selfie” videos uploaded by users will be encrypted and secure, and that the facial data used in the comparisons will be deleted immediately after use and will not be used for any other purpose.
Meta had previously integrated facial recognition technology into Facebook to identify users in photos and videos, but stopped using it in 2021 after a long controversy over privacy.
The company currently confirms that the new tools have undergone rigorous reviews regarding security and privacy, and are being discussed with regulators and policymakers.