Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, has decided to reinstate facial recognition technology to combat fraud on the two social media platforms.
Meta decided to shut down its facial recognition system three years ago, but now it's reinstating the technology on Facebook and Instagram to combat fraud and restore access to compromised accounts.
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| Meta to stop controversial facial recognition technology from 2021 |
Fraudsters are constantly changing their tactics to avoid detection, Meta's blog says, so the company relies on its existing defenses to test new ways to best protect people.
According to Meta, scammers often use celebrity images to trick people into interacting with ads. The tool will match the faces in questionable ads with the celebrities’ official Facebook and Instagram pages. If they match, the ad is identified as fraudulent and blocked.
In addition to fighting fraud, Meta is also testing a new, more convenient method of identity verification when a user's account is compromised: asking them to take a selfie video.
This selfie video will be carefully compared to the photos on the account to verify the legitimacy of the claim. These videos will never be uploaded to the profile or shown to friends. Any facial data generated after the comparison process will be deleted.
Previously, Meta required users who lost their accounts to use other forms of identity verification, such as IDs and official documents. With the selfie video, the verification process is faster, taking just a minute.
Although facial recognition technology has been controversial, Meta still believes that this technology can be applied in the most useful and safe way.
Facebook abandoned its facial recognition program – which suggested tagging friends in photos – in 2021, deleting more than 1 billion samples after authorities warned of privacy violations and EU regulators began to clamp down on its use.
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