We use facial recognition technology to check if images of public figures and high profile individuals are being misused in scams on our platforms. This article explains how we use this technology and how it impacts other people whose images may appear in these scams.
Scammers often use the images of public figures and high profile individuals to bait people into engaging with scams. These types of scams, such as when bad actors post "celeb-bait" ads or try to deceive users through impersonating Pages or profiles, violate our policies and are bad for our community.
Bad actors regularly attempt to find ways to work around our systems, so we are constantly adapting and enhancing the ways we detect these types of scams and stop bad actors from deceiving people for financial gain. We have recently introduced facial recognition technology (an automated method of face analysis) to help reduce scams that misuse images. This helps us to detect and stop scams like fraud or impersonation faster and more accurately.
Sometimes images of other people also appear in these scams. In these limited circumstances, we may incidentally and temporarily process these images but without recognizing their identities. This is a necessary part of our process for detecting these types of scams. For example, we might process an image of someone in a celeb-bait ad alongside the public figure whose image is being misused. In other instances, we may process the image of a public figure and someone shown in an account photo if we suspect the account is impersonating a public figure. The purpose of using this technology is to try to match the faces in the image to the face of the public figure. We are not trying to identify who the other people are in the image.
We don't store embeddings related to other people who appear in potential scams and they are deleted from our systems after the comparison has taken place. We also use other technical measures to limit the number of images that we use this technology on. We don't use the embeddings for anything other than helping ensure the effective detection of, and enforcement against, scams.
The Meta Privacy Policy explains your rights and how we use your information. These measures are part of our efforts to promote safety, integrity and security on our platforms. It is in our interest to continue to combat harmful behaviour, including detecting, preventing and addressing spam, suspicious activity, breaches of our terms or policies, harmful or inappropriate content, and other bad experiences on our platforms.
If you are a public figure and want to learn more about how we use facial recognition to protect your image from misuse, visit the help center.