Meta Expands Use of Face ID for Security Purposes

After testing out new facial recognition features for account recovery last year, Meta’s now expanding the option to high profile users in the some regions, in order detect potential scams and enable faster account recovery.

Last October, Meta announced that it was trying out new facial recognition options to help it identify “celeb-bait,” which is where scammers use images of public figures in order to trick people into engaging with ads that then lead to scam websites.

With this new process, Meta matches the faces used in ads to the images that it has on file of high profile users. And where there’s a match, Meta confirms with the users’ official profile as to whether it’s a legitimate, endorsed promotion.

Meta’s been testing this out with selected users since then, and now, it’s launching an expanded test of the process with users in the U.K., EU and South Korea.

As per Meta:

“In the coming weeks, public figures in the UK and EU will start seeing in-app notifications letting them know they can now opt-in to receive the celeb bait protection with facial recognition technology. And in countries where this is already available, we’re extending the celeb bait protection to a larger number of public figures.”

Meta’s also expanding its test of account recovery via facial recognition to users in these regions as well, providing another means to access your account in case of any issue.

“We have vetted these measures through our robust privacy and risk review process and built important safeguards, like providing information to educate people about how they work, making these measures optional and ensuring we delete people’s facial data as soon as it’s no longer needed.”

It is interesting to see Meta wading back into the murky waters of facial recognition, and storing users’ face ID, because in the past, that hasn’t always gone so well for the company.

Back in 2021, Meta shut down its face recognition processes on Facebook entirely, amid a broader shift in policy designed to distance the platform from the controversies of its past. Facial recognition tools are already being used for questionable purpose, including identifying people entering sports stadiums, and matching people’s criminal or credit history in real time. In China, for example, facial recognition technology is being used to catch people jaywalking, and send them fines in the mail, or further penalize people who’ve not paid parking fines. Or worse, to identify Uyghur Muslims and single them out for tracking.   

Meta clearly wanted to avoid any association and brand risk associated with the same process, so it switched it off completely.

But now, it’s turning to face ID again.

I mean, that’s not a total surprise, as face ID can be an effective and useful process in all of these applications, making it harder for scammers to use people’s likeness, while also offering additional account security.

But in order to do so, Meta does need to store people’s face print, for at least some period of time. As per the above quote, Meta’s keen to highlight that it will get rid of such as soon as it can, and it won’t use this type of identifying info for any other purpose.

But given nefarious uses of the same in the past, you can also see why some users might be wary of uploading their images to a major corporation.

Yet, at the same time, Meta is also developing more advanced facial recognition processes in order to, say, generate more accurate avatars for digital interaction.

As reported by UploadVR, Meta recently outlined its latest process that’s able to generate photorealistic avatars from just four phone selfies.

Meta’s been working on similar approaches for some time, with a view to facilitating more authentic, realistic connection in its VR environment. And with that in mind, Meta’s going to have to convince more people to eventually upload their selfies either way, as part of its expanded metaverse vision.

So it’s going to have to convince users that it can be trusted with such anyway, and as such, maybe starting out small, with more practical uses of selfies like this, is a good stepping stone to that next stage.

I would suggest that this is just as significant of a motivating factor as the added security elements, which is why Meta will gradually expand this bit-by-bit.

It’ll be interesting to see how users in different regions respond to the option.